What do soil microorganisms do for the physical, chemical, and/or bio-chemical properties of soil?
Soil microorganisms breakdown a variety of organic materials and use a portion of these breakdown products to generate or synthesize a series of compounds that make up humus. See http://.rain.org/~sals/Petrik.html. The three major fractions of humus are humic substances, poly-saccharides and other non-humic substances, and humin. These materials impact on the physical, chemical and bio-chemical properties of soil in many important ways; See B.03.04 regarding humic substances, B.03.06 regarding humin, and B.03.09 regarding polysaccharides. In addition to producing humus, the soil microorganisms breakdown and/or bind a variety of organic and inorganic materials to clean up corrupted or polluted soils – petroleum products, synthetic pesticides, and heavy metals included. See B.03.10 regarding soil cleanup using bio-remediation.
