This Editorial introduces a EJSS Thematic Virtual Issue to highlight the importance of soils to celebrate World Environment Day 2022. The collection of papers selected by Dr Dan Evans is available here: https://bsssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2389.world-environment-day Soils are one of the most significant components of terrestrial environments. They deliver an array of supporting, regulatory and provisioning roles across multiple spatial and temporal scales. It was therefore essential that soils—their diversity, their multifunctionality, and their complex and dynamic relationships with other ecosystems—were celebrated on annual World Environment Day, held this year on Sunday 5th June. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the theme of the 2022 World Environment Day was “Only One Earth”. It called for collective, transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect and restore our planet. Confronted with ongoing and, in some cases, accelerating rates of land degradation and soil erosion, this year's theme was particularly relevant to soils. It acted as a reminder that, in human timeframes, soils are non-renewable, and that global efforts are needed to conserve them for future generations. #OnlyOneEarth This Thematic Virtual Issue of the European Journal of Soil Science serves to spotlight the importance of soil across a wide range of terrestrial environments, and to showcase the multifarious functions that soils play within these systems. The papers that have been curated for this Virtual Issue demonstrate that soil properties and processes are not only eclectic and often specialist across space and time, but that they are, to various degrees, sensitive to change, be it a short-term perturbation event (e.g. extreme weather episodes), or a long-term shift in the environment (e.g. climate change). Moreover, it will remain clear throughout reading the Virtual Issue that to bring about this “transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect, and restore our planet”, we must first advance our understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes in soils, how these govern soil functions, and how they react to, and interact, with environmental changes imposed upon them. The significance of soils at a continental scale, and how soil functions are modulated across contrasting climatic regimes and land management practices, is exemplified at the beginning of this Virtual Issue by Zwetsloot et al. (2021). This study represents one of the first to assess and monitor soil multifunctionality across Europe. Critically, whilst multifunctionality in soil can be achieved, the authors suggest that constraints and trade-offs do exist. In the spirit of World Environment Day, the paper serves as a fitting reminder that finding solutions to protect and restore all terrestrial ecosystems simultaneously may be overly optimistic, and that optimization polices may be more effective. Noted by Zwetsloot et al. (2021) as one of the functions delivered less frequently at high capacity across Europe, protecting and restoring biodiversity is critical across many environments, globally. Soil biodiversity in particular is often sacrificed for primary productivity and nutrient cycling, as demonstrated by Vazquez et al. (2021). Here, the authors show that a careful application of pesticides and fertilisers can address this trade-off and increase soil multifunctionality, a point which is also reiterated by Shi et al. (2020) in their field-based study of the impact of long-term fertilisation on soil fungal assemblies. Land management changes can therefore play a role in governing below-ground communities, alongside long-term climatic changes. However, as Shen et al. (2020) reveals, some soil biology can acclimatise. Under a long-term warming experiment in a steppe ecosystem, the authors found that soil heterotrophic respiration acclimated to long-term warming via modifying the constitution of cell membranes. Meanwhile, the impacts of changing climatic conditions on soil macrofauna are illustrated in Singh et al. (2021) who find that seasonality plays a seminal role in modulating the effects of future climate change. The need to advance our understanding of soil chemistry to better manage terrestrial environments is also highlighted here. Part of that advancement requires improved monitoring infrastructure, as showcased by Corwin (2021) who demonstrates how proximal sensors and remote imagery can be used to assess soil salinity on dryland agricultural soils. At grander spatial scales, in addition to improved monitoring capabilities, synthesising existing research is also key, as foregrounded by Zheng et al. (2021) who uses a meta-analysis approach to investigate the effect of external nitrogen input across global natural ecosystems. As well as outstanding fundamental research in agroecosystems, this Virtual Issue also captures the paramount roles that soils play across other environments, each of which confront their own mix of threats and challenges. For example, Jung et al. (2020) investigate the responses of soil organic carbon (SOC) and the bacterial community to climate manipulation in permafrost, where prolonged warming could induce SOC losses in the long-term, although this response could vary with vegetation type. A similar finding is made by Whitaker et al. (2021) in their study of peatland carbon. The authors find that peatland carbon fluxes are influenced by plant functional types (PFT), with climate-induced expansion of graminoids having both a direct and indirect effects on the stability of peatland carbon stores. In addition to permafrost and peatlands, Zhao et al. (2022) study the effects of warming on soil microbial communities in natural forest and tree plantation systems. Interestingly, 4 years of warming increased the mean carbon content in the natural forest but decreased this in the plantation. Tidal marsh soils are also featured here, courtesy of Hu et al. (2021) who investigate denitrification rates in subtropical estuarine marshes. The importance of soil in these terrestrial–marine environments is exemplified here, with soil texture and soil organic matter content playing critical roles in governing denitrification, independent of salinity. Assessing how soils under different land uses will respond to future climatic change is key, as is understanding the effect of shifting land use regimes. Part of the Virtual Issue is devoted to this topic, starting with the work of Armbruster et al. (2021) which suggests that the soil microbial taxa are among the most sensitive indicators of land use change, a finding which is echoed by Zhang et al. (2021) who studies the changes to soil physical, chemical and biological properties during grassland desertification. Notably, the authors find that bacterial communities are more sensitive in macroaggregates than in microaggregates, demonstrating the intricate relationship between soil physics and soil biology. However, there is always likely to be a response time between perturbation and response. For example, Coca-Salazar et al. (2021) find that fallow periods up to 6 years are too short to lead to any significant impact on soil microbial processes. Nevertheless, monitoring the ecological consequences of land-cover change over time is important. Here, we highlight the work of Urgilez-Clavijo et al. (2021). Adopting a multifractal approach, the authors find that deforestation patterns are linked to soil types which can provide useful insights to direct more sustainable conservation programmes in future. Chen et al. (2020) track the response of microbial communities following the conversion of desert soil to oasis farmland along a chronosequence. What this study also highlights is the importance of time in soil processes and responses, and thus for the conception of long-term management strategies. Likewise, Cooper et al. (2021) study the effect of zero-tillage on soil carbon and find that improved aggregate formation occurs best when zero-tillage is implemented for at least 15 years. In another long-term experiment lasting 31 years in a highland agroecosystem, Su et al. (2022) find that pure legume cropping can lead to increased microbial residues and SOC accumulation. At a continental scale, a repeated survey of Asian paddy soils in the 1960s and 2010s conducted by Yanai et al. (2022) finds an increase in available phosphorus but a decline in soil organic matter. This Virtual Issue concludes with “hard talk”. In his invited opinion article, Lal (2020) argues for a systems-based approach to agriculture which sustains agronomic productivity whilst minimising soil degradation and environmental pollution. Given that there is “only one Earth”, it is critical that we “maximize the use efficiency of inputs and minimize the environmental footprint”. That aim must sit at the top of the agenda as we celebrate World Environment Day this June.