Rate My Professor Richard Bardgett

Professor Richard Bardgett CBE is Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Chair in Ecology at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, where he established the Centre for Sustainable Soils in 2025. A soil ecologist, his research focuses on how interactions between plants, their roots, and soil microbial communities regulate biogeochemical cycles and respond to climate change. He examines the role of plant functional traits in shaping soil microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles from local to global scales, vegetation shifts impacting these cycles, and the ecological resilience of below-ground communities to climate extremes. His work, funded by major grants from ERC and NERC including a €2.49 million ERC Advanced Grant (2021-2026) on soil microbiome diversity, stability, and functioning, explores how vegetation change and land management moderate below-ground responses to extremes, providing foundational insights for climate mitigation and restoration of degraded ecosystems. Bardgett graduated from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1987 with a degree in Soil and Land Resource Science and completed his PhD in 1991 at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology and Lancaster University, studying grazer impacts on soil biota. His career includes positions at the Nature Conservancy Council surveying upland vegetation, the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research as a research scientist, lecturer in Environmental Biology at the University of Manchester (1995-1999), senior lecturer and professor at Lancaster University (1999-2013), professor at the University of Manchester (2013-2025), and his return to Lancaster in 2025.

Bardgett has received numerous honors, including appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2023 for services to soil ecology and climate change science, recognition as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher multiple years (2017-2024), election as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (2006), Member of Academia Europaea (2015), and honorary doctorate from Hasselt University (2015). He served as President of the British Ecological Society (2017-2019), currently chairs the BBSRC Biodiversity Expert Working Group, sits on NERC Council (2025-present) and Defra’s Science Advisory Council (2021-present), and was Thinker in Residence for the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (2019-2021). Key publications include books such as The Ecology of Soil: From Communities to Ecosystems (2025, Oxford University Press), Earth Matters: How Soil Underlies Civilisation (2016), Aboveground-Belowground Linkages (2010), The Biology of Soil (2005, Marsh Ecology Book of the Year Award), and highly cited papers like 'The unseen majority: soil microbes as drivers of plant diversity and productivity in terrestrial ecosystems' (2008, Ecology Letters, 5997 citations) and 'Ecological linkages between aboveground and belowground biota' (2004, Science, 5750 citations). As Executive Editor of Journal of Ecology (2020-present), he has significantly influenced soil ecology, bridging plant and soil sciences and co-founding the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative in 2011.