Soils are a life support system for global society and our planet. Soils directly provide the vast majority of our food; they are the largest store of carbon in the earth system; and they regulate water quality and quantity reducing the risk of floods, droughts and pollution. In this way, soils provide a natural form of infrastructure that is critical to supporting both rural and urban communities and economies.

Soil functioning is the product of hydrological, physical (soil erosion and weathering), biological and chemical processes, and so knowledge across these fields needs to be combined to understand soil as an infrastructure. This fellowship will draw together these disciplines to create a new computer model that will improve our understanding of soil infrastructures, their value to society and their resilience. This model will be used to explore how future scenarios will influence the provision of food-water-carbon services to our societies. This will allow us to find ways to enhance our soils to provide more benefits for our societies, improving sustainability and well-being.