Environmental Conditions that impact plants and animals: Environmental Impacts on Plants

Explore the hidden world of soil, a 'life-support system' for plants.
Find out what soil is made of and what lives within it.
Discover how and why you should improve your soil.

Healthy plants depend on the Soil Food Web. Plants are able to make sugars from photosynthesis, but they need other nutrients too. Yet, a lot of these nutrients are locked away in the soil in forms that plants can’t use directly.

Mallee, region of northwestern Victoria, Australia. It occupies about 16,000 square miles (41,000 square km) between the Wimmera and Murray rivers, and its climate is semiarid, with only 10–12 inches (250–300 mm) of rainfall annually. A narrow belt of irrigated land supports vineyards, citrus orchards, wheat fields, and dairy and sheep farming, but intensive irrigation has increased salinity and soil degradation.