Essential soil functions such as plant productivity, C storage, nutrient cycling and the storage and purification of water all depend on soil biological processes. Given this insight, it is remarkable that in modeling of these soil functions, the various biological actors usually do not play an explicit role. In this review and perspective paper we analyze the state of the art in modeling these soil functions and how biological processes could more adequately be accounted for. We do this for six different biologically driven processes clusters that are key for understanding soil functions, namely i) turnover of soil organic matter, ii) N cycling, iii) P dynamics, iv) biodegradation of contaminants v) plant disease control and vi) soil structure formation. A major conclusion is that the development of models to predict changes in soil functions at the scale of soil profiles (i.e. pedons) should be better rooted in the underlying biological processes that are known to a large extent. This is prerequisite to arrive at the predictive models that we urgently need under current conditions of Global Change.

植物生产力、碳储存、养分循环以及水的储存和净化等基本土壤功能都取决于土壤生物过程。鉴于这一见解，值得注意的是，在这些土壤功能的建模中，各种生物参与者通常不会发挥明确的作用。在这篇综述和展望论文中，我们分析了这些土壤功能建模的最新技术，以及如何更充分地解释生物过程。我们对六个不同的生物驱动过程集群进行了这项研究，这些过程集群对于理解土壤功能至关重要，即i）土壤有机质的周转，ii）氮循环，iii）磷动态，iv）污染物的生物降解v）植物病害控制和vi）土壤结构的形成。一个主要结论是，在土壤剖面（即土壤）尺度上预测土壤功能变化的模型的开发应该更好地植根于很大程度上已知的潜在生物过程。这是在当前全球变化的情况下得出我们迫切需要的预测模型的先决条件。