Quantifying earthworm community structures as indicators of soil health

Abstract

Earthworms are a symbol that farmers use to indicate soil health, but is this an intuitive observation that will lead to sustainable soils? This chapter describes the co-development of an assessment method to the ecological group level (epigeic, endogeic and anecic earthworms) in the UK. The process resulted in a Twitter based #WorldWormWeek initiative, a connective network of organic and conventional farmers and the Rothamsted Research experimental farm between 23 – 31st March 2019. There was an unexplained absence of epigeic (28 % fields) and anecic (18 % fields) earthworms in fields surveyed by UK farmers.