Workflow of soil microbial distribution mapping and clustering. Credit: Global Change Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1111/gcb.70268 Researchers from the Sydney Institute of Agriculture at the University of Sydney investigated the vast and largely hidden world beneath our feet. Soil is where 59% of all life on Earth resides. A single gram of soil can contain up to 10 billion bacteria, far exceeding the human population on the planet. Like plants and animals, these