Soilwatching: Windows to the underground

A unique set of short videos that invites you to the wonders of the world below our feet.

Dive into the wonders of the world below your feet with Soilwatching. Through this initiative—partly funded by BECC—the SoilChip research group unveils the vibrant life thriving in soils. Using an innovative approach with so-called “Cyborg soils”, their findings come to life in a captivating series of short videos, bringing you closer to the unseen wonders of the soil.

The film below gives you an introduction to Soilwatching. Further down you will find more exiting videos!

Welcome to Soilwatching

How does Soilwatching work?

The Cyborg Soils consists of micro engineered chips that are either buried in the wild, or surrounded with soil in the lab for enough time for the microbial cities to emerge within the mud.

The chips literally act like windows to the underground. A transparent patch in the otherwise opaque soil, the chip is cut to mimic the pore structures of actual soil, which are often strange and counter-intuitive at the scale that microbes experience them. This new window into what’s happening underground could help us better appreciate and preserve Earth’s increasingly damaged soils.

Now, we want to introduce you to the wonders and mysteries of soil. How does its inhabitants spend there days, what happens if the soil freezes, gets polluted or disturbed? In the films below, you will see footage of some things that has never been documented before - and you will never see soil in the same way again!

What´s a nice dinner in the soil? We found a yummy canapé, a spaghetti monster, cocktail slurpers, Things eating things from INSIDE OUT, and generally utter chaos:)