Image: Dylan Shaw UnSplash
May 2, 2023 6.00am AEST in The Conversation
Mosses are some of the oldest land plants. They are found all over the world, from lush tropical rainforests to the driest deserts, and even the wind-swept hills of Antarctica.
They are everywhere; growing in cracks along roads and pathways, on the trunks of trees, on rocks and buildings, and importantly, on the soil.
Yet despite this ubiquity, we have a relatively poor understanding of how important they are, particularly the types of moss that thrive on soil.
New global research on soil mosses published today in Nature Geoscience reveals they play critical roles in sustaining life on our planet. Without soil mosses, Earth’s ability to produce healthy soils, provide habitat for microbes and fight pathogens would be greatly diminished.
A global survey of soil mosses
The results of the new study indicate we have probably underestimated just how important soil mosses are.
Using data from 123 sites across all continents including Antarctica, we show that the soil beneath mosses has more nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium, and a greater activity of soil enzymes than bare surfaces with no plants.
In fact, mosses affect all major soil functions, increasing carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and the breakdown of organic matter. These processes are critical for sustaining life on Earth.
Our modelling revealed that soil mosses cover a huge area of the planet, about 9 million square kilometres – equivalent to the area of China. And that’s not counting mosses from boreal forests, which were not included in the study.
The strength of the effect mosses have on soil depends on their growing conditions. They have the strongest effect in natural low productivity environments, such as deserts. They are also more important on sandy and salty soils, and where rainfall is highly variable.
Not unexpectedly, mosses have the strongest effects on soils where vascular plants– those that contain specialised tissues to conduct water and minerals – are sparse.
Read more: Silver moss is a rugged survivor in the city landscape
An intimate connection
Mosses lack the plumbing that allows vascular plants to grow tall and pull water from beneath the soil. This keeps them relatively short, and means they develop an intimate connection with the uppermost soil layers.
Mosses are extremely absorbent and can attract airborne dust particles. Some of these particles are incorporated into the soil below. It is not surprising then that they have such a strong effect on soils.
Our modelling shows that, across the globe, mosses store 6.4 gigatonnes more carbon than soils without plant cover.
Losing just 15% of the global cover of soil mosses would be equivalent to global emissions of carbon dioxide from all land use changes over a year, such as clearing and overgrazing.

Not all mosses are equal
We also found some mosses are more effective at promoting healthy soils than others. Long-lived mosses tended to be associated with more carbon and greater control of soil pathogens.
The ability of mosses to provide ecosystem services and support a diverse community of microbes, fungi and invertebrates was strongest in locations with a high cover of mat- and turf-forming mosses such as Sphagnum, which are widely distributed in boreal forests.
Soils are a huge reservoir of soil pathogens, yet the soil beneath mosses had a lower proportion of plant pathogens. Mosses can help to reduce the pathogen load in soils. This ability may have originated when mosses evolved as land plants.
A special group in the desert
A special type of moss flourishes in deserts. They either live hard (perennial mosses) or die young (annual mosses).
Mosses in the family Pottiaceae are uniquely suited to life under dry and inhospitable conditions. Many have specialised structures that allow them to survive when water is scarce. These include boat-shaped leaves with long hairy tips that help to funnel water into the centre of the plant. Some mosses twist around their stem to reduce the area exposed to the sun and conserve moisture.

Desert mosses also protect the soil against erosion, influence how much watermoves through the upper layers and even alter the survival chances of plant seedlings.
Other mosses have special moisture-absorbing cells (papillae) that swell up and provide them with a moisture reserve when conditions are dry.

Our global study showed that mat- and turf-forming mosses such as Sphagnumhad the strongest positive effects on the diversity of microbes, fungi and invertebrates, and on critical services such as nutrient supply. Predictably, longer-lived mosses supported more soil carbon and had greater control of plant pathogens than short-lived mosses.
Protect the mosses
Overall, our work shows mosses influence important soil processes and function in the same way vascular plants do. Their effects may not be as strong, but their total cover means mosses are potentially as significant when summed across the whole globe.
But mosses are under increasing threats globally; disturbance by livestock, overharvesting, land clearing and even changing climates are the greatest threats.
We need a greater acknowledgement of the services that soil mosses provide for all life on this planet. This means greater education about their positive benefits, identifying and mitigating the main threats they face, and including them in routine monitoring programs.
Soil mosses are everywhere, but their future is far from secure. They are likely to play increasingly important roles as vascular plants decline under predicted hotter, drier and more variable global climates.
- Article
- Published:
The global contribution of soil mosses to ecosystem services
Nature Geoscience (2023)
Abstract
Soil mosses are among the most widely distributed organisms on land. Experiments and observations suggest that they contribute to terrestrial soil biodiversity and function, yet their ecological contribution to soil has never been assessed globally under natural conditions. Here we conducted the most comprehensive global standardized field study to quantify how soil mosses influence 8 ecosystem services associated with 24 soil biodiversity and functional attributes across wide environmental gradients from all continents. We found that soil mosses are associated with greater carbon sequestration, pool sizes for key nutrients and organic matter decomposition rates but a lower proportion of soil-borne plant pathogens than unvegetated soils. Mosses are especially important for supporting multiple ecosystem services where vascular-plant cover is low. Globally, soil mosses potentially support 6.43 Gt more carbon in the soil layer than do bare soils. The amount of soil carbon associated with mosses is up to six times the annual global carbon emissions from any altered land use globally. The largest positive contribution of mosses to soils occurs under a high cover of mat and turf mosses, in less-productive ecosystems and on sandy and salty soils. Our results highlight the contribution of mosses to soil life and functions and the need to conserve these important organisms to support healthy soils.
References
-
Lindo, Z. & Gonzalez, A. The Bryosphere: an integral and influential component of the Earth’s biosphere. Ecosystems 13, 612–627 (2010).
-
Turetsky, M. R. et al. The resilience and functional role of moss in boreal and arctic ecosystems. New Phytol. 196, 49–67 (2012).
-
Rodriguez-Caballero, E. et al. Dryland photoautotrophic soil surface communities endangered by global change. Nat. Geosci. 11, 185–189 (2018).
-
Shaw, A. J., Cox, C. J. & Goffinet, B. Global patterns of moss diversity: taxonomic and molecular inferences. Taxon 54, 337–352 (2005).
-
Garcia-Moya, E. & McKell, C. M. Contribution of shrubs to the nitrogen economy of a desert-wash plant community. Ecology 51, 81–88 (1970).
-
Jonsson, M. et al. Direct and indirect drivers of moss community structure, function, and associated microfauna across a successional gradient. Ecosystems 18, 154–169 (2015).
-
Delgado-Baquerizo, M. et al. Biocrust forming mosses mitigate the impact of aridity on soil microbial communities in drylands: observational evidence from three continents. New Phytol. 220, 824–835 (2018).
-
Eldridge, D. J. et al. The pervasive and multifaceted influence of biocrusts on water in the world’s drylands. Glob. Change Biol. 26, 6003–6014 (2020).
-
Kasimir, Å., He, H., Jansson, P.-E., Lohila, A. & Minkkinen, K. Mosses are important for soil carbon sequestration in forested peatlands. Front. Environ. Sci. 9, 680430 (2021).
-
Reed, S. C. et al. Changes to dryland rainfall result in rapid moss mortality and altered soil fertility. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 752–755 (2012).
-
Romero, A. N., Moratta, M. H., Vento, B., Rodriguez, R. & Carretero, E. M. Variations in the coverage of biological soil crusts along an aridity gradient in the central-west Argentina. Acta Oecol. 109, 103671 (2020).
-
Byun, M. Y., Kim, D., Youn, U. J., Lee, S. & Lee, H. Improvement of moss photosynthesis by humic acids from Antarctic tundra soil. Plant Physiol. Biochem. 159, 37–42 (2021).
-
Gross, N. et al. Linking individual response to biotic interactions with community structure: a trait-based framework. Funct. Ecol. 23, 1167–1178 (2009).
-
Büdel, B. et al. Improved appreciation of the functioning and importance of biological soil crusts in Europe: the Soil Crust International Project (SCIN). Biodivers. Conserv. 23, 1639–1658 (2014).
-
Geffert, J. L., Frahn, J. L., Barthlott, W. & Mutke, J. Global moss diversity: spatial and taxonomic patterns of species richness. J. Bryol. 35, 1–11 (2013).
-
Delgado-Baquerizo, M. et al. Multiple elements of soil biodiversity drive ecosystem functions across biomes. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 4, 210–220 (2020).
-
Armas, C., Ordiales, R. & Pugnaire, F. I. Measuring plant interactions: a new comparative index. Ecology 85, 2682–2686 (2004).
-
Hollingsworth, T. N., Schuur, E. A. G., Chapin, F. S. & Walker, M. D. Plant community composition as a predictor of regional soil carbon storage in Alaskan boreal black spruce ecosystems. Ecosystems 11, 629–642 (2008).
-
Porada, P., Weber, B., Elbert, W., Pöschl, U. & Kleidon, A. Estimating global carbon uptake by lichens and bryophytes with a process-based model. Biogeosciences 10, 6989–7033 (2013).
-
LaRoi, G. H. & Stringer, M. H. Ecological studies in the boreal spruce–fir forests of the North American taiga. II. Analysis of the bryophyte flora. Can. J. Bot. 54, 619–643 (1976).
-
Ino, Y. & Nakatsubo, T. Distribution of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in a moss community soil system developed on a cold desert in Antarctica. Ecol. Res. 1, 59–69 (1986).
-
Chapin, F. III, Oechel, W., Van Cleve, K. & Lawrence, W. The role of mosses in the phosphorus cycling of an Alaskan black spruce forest. Oecologia 74, 310–315 (1987).
-
Brown, D. H. & Bates, J. W. Bryophytes and nutrient cycling. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 104, 129–147 (1990).
-
Makajanma, M. M., Taufik, I. & Faizal, A. Antioxidant and antibacterial activity of extract from two species of mosses: Leucobryum aduncum and Campylopus schmidii. Biodiversitas 21, 2751–2758 (2020).
-
Asakawa, Y. Biologically active compounds from bryophytes. Pure Appl. Chem. 79, 557–580 (2007).
-
Bastida, F. et al. Soil microbial diversity–biomass relationships are driven by soil carbon content across global biomes. ISME J. 15, 2081–2091 (2021).
-
Basile, A., Giordano, S., López-Sáez, J. A. & Cobianchi, R. C. Antibacterial activity of pure flavonoids isolated from mosses. Phytochemistry 52, 1479–1482 (1999).
-
Rousk, K., Jones, D. L. & DeLuca, T. H. Moss–cyanobacteria associations as biogenic sources of nitrogen in boreal forest ecosystems. Front. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2013.00150 (2013).
-
Commisso, M. et al. Bryo-activities: a review on how bryophytes are contributing to the arsenal of natural bioactive compounds against fungi. Plants https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10020203 (2021).
-
Carter, D. & Arocena, J. Soil formation under two moss species in sandy materials of central British Columbia (Canada). Geoderma 98, 157–176 (2000).
-
Glime, J. M. Bryophyte Ecology Vol. 1 (Michigan Tech. Univ. and Int. Assoc. Bryol., 2017).
-
Herlemann, D. P. R. et al. Transitions in bacterial communities along the 2000 km salinity gradient of the Baltic Sea. ISME J. 5, 1571–1579 (2011).
-
Ihrmark, K. et al. New primers to amplify the fungal ITS2 region—evaluation by 454-sequencing of artificial and natural communities. FEMS Microb. Ecol. 82, 666–677 (2012).
-
Callahan, B. J. et al. DADA2: high-resolution sample inference from Illumina amplicon data. Nat. Methods 7, 581–583 (2016).
-
Tedersoo, L. et al. Regional-scale in-depth analysis of soil fungal diversity reveals strong pH and plant species effects in northern Europe. Front. Microbiol. 11, 1953 (2020).
-
Bell, C. W. et al. High-throughput fluorometric measurement of potential soil extracellular enzyme activities. J. Vis. Exp. 15, e50961 (2013).
-
Campbell, C., Chapman, S., Cameron, C., Davidson, M. & Potts, J. A. Rapid microtiter plate method to measure carbon dioxide evolved from carbon substrate amendments so as to determine the physiological profiles of soil microbial communities by using whole soil. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 69, 3593–3599 (2003).
-
Frostegard, A. et al. Use and misuse of PLFA measurements in soils. Soil Biol. Biochem. 43, 1621–1625 (2011).
-
Hu, H., Jung, K., Wang, Q., Saif, L. J., & Vlasova, A. N. Development of a one-step RT-PCR assay for detection of pancoronaviruses (α-, β-, γ-, and δ-coronaviruses) using newly designed degenerate primers for porcine and avian fecal samples. J. Virol. Methods 256, 116–122 (2018).
-
Schmittgen, T. D. & Livak, K. J. Analyzing real-time PCR data by the comparative C(T) method. Nat. Protoc. 3, 1101–1108 (2008).
-
Nguyen, N. H. et al. FUNGuild: an open annotation tool for parsing fungal community datasets by ecological guild. Fungal Ecol. 20, 241–248 (2015).
-
Grace, J. B. Structural Equation Modelling and Natural Systems (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006).
-
Le, T. B., Wu, J. & Gong, Y. Vascular plants regulate responses of boreal peatland Sphagnum to climate warming and nitrogen addition. Sci. Total Environ. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152077 (2022).
-
Archer, E. rfPermute: Estimate Permutation p-Values for Random Forest Importance Metrics v.1.5.2 (2016).
-
Lahouar, A. & Slama, J. B. H. Day-ahead load forecast using random forest and expert input selection. Energy Convers. Manage. 103, 1040–1051 (2015).
-
Loveland, T. R. et al. An analysis of the IGBP global land-cover characterization process. Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens. 65, 1021–1032 (1999).
-
Lembrechts, J. J. et al. Global maps of soil temperature. Glob. Change Biol. 28, 3110–3144 (2021).
-
Hengl, T. et al. SoilGrids250m: global gridded soil information based on machine learning. PLoS ONE 12, e0169748 (2017).
-
Piñeiro, G., Perelman, S., Guerschman, J. P. & Paruelo, J. M. How to evaluate models: observed vs. predicted or predicted vs. observed? Ecol. Model. 216, 316–322 (2008).
-
Brown, S. bivarRasterPlot.R (R-project.org, accessed 6 June 2022); https://gist.github.com/scbrown86/2779137a9378df7b60afd23e0c45c188
-
Eldridge, D. J. & Delgado-Baquerizo, M. Soil mosses support the delivery of critical ecosystem services globally. Figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22220824 (2023).
“We MUST respect this earth - it is all we have
Claudio Dametto - South Australia
“I will always Vote to Preserve Our World.
Liam McGregor - Western Australia
“A simple message that even a politician can understand
Felicity Crombach - Victoria
“Please show you care about our future generations!!
Phil Harmer - New South Wales
“Save our world , Life & health before profits.
Kerry Lillian - New South Wales
“Close down all coal mines and Do not mine gas . Make these Companies
Daniel Johnson - New South Wales
“We want carbon free energy!
Edan Clarke - New South Wales
“Feels good to be taking a voter action step
Beaver Hudson - New South Wales
“Great Initiative. Let’s Hold elected officials Accountable to their bosses, us!
John Paul Posada - New South Wales
“We need actions not words we need honest democratic govt We need a pm
Bob Pearce - South Australia
“Thank you for this great resource. I was feeling helpless. Even this small step
Silvia Anderson - Victoria
“If political parties continue receiving political donations, we will rarely have politicians working for
Dan Chicos - New South Wales
“I only vote for people who will take urgent action to restore a safe
Susie Burke - Victoria
“Current government is not representing the opinion of the majority of Australian to meet
Neil Price - Tasmania
“We are fighting to rescue our kids' future from those who seek to steal
Vanessa Norimi - Queensland
“No time to waste Now or Never My vote is for NOW
Rosalie White - Victoria
“I am only 9 but I already care
Ava Bell - New South Wales
“From New Lambton Uniting Church - Caring for our world is a moral imperative.
Niall McKay - New South Wales
“Our federal govt is an International climate Embarrassment - its about time they stepped
Oriana Tolo - Victoria
“Vote earth this time!
Sue Cooke - Queensland
“We are in one on the wealthiest countries in the world. we have the
rowan huxtable - New South Wales
“The climate Emergency is the public health opportunity and urgent priority of the 21st
Mike Forrester - Victoria
“If they want my vote they better act now
Barbara McNiff - New South Wales
“We need to act locally now for the earth. Our only home. Vote Earth
Anne Miller - New South Wales
“I often look at the places I've known all my life and see how
Jim Baird - New South Wales
“Strike one For people power!!! Democracy might prevail outside the current cronyism that faces
Lorraine Bridger - New South Wales
“Our federal politicians Are Afraid to make action on climate change a major election
Jennifer Martin - New South Wales
“climate election, let's go!
Fahimah Badrulhisham - New South Wales
“Great to see this website that is a focus on action for climate change
Lynette Sinclair - New South Wales
“Let’s show politicians and the Murdoch media that climate change is by far the
Jane Aitken - Australian Capital Territory
“If you want to stay in power You need to take action to stop
Jane Bulter - New South Wales
“We are all that stands between terminal climate change and the vulnerable. We are
Carol Khan - Queensland
“We need a Government that Believes this is real and not taking money from
Ken Gray - New South Wales
“I'm voting for my childrens future
Anneliese Alexander - New South Wales