I believe this book to be a great resource for teaching and for researchers interested in soil biodiversity in the tropics as well as elsewhere, providing a guide with standardized and tried methods to monitor biodiversity. With soils in decline world-wide and new pressure for changes in land use, there is an urgent need for standardized methods to monitor the effect of land management on soil biodiversity. The book brings together world leading experts and establishes standards for characterization and quantification of soil organisms ranging from macrofauna and mesofauna to micro-organisms. Methodologies for each group of soil biota are described and discussed in great detail so that it is accessible for non-specialists. All methods have been applied in an integrated sampling scheme to assess the relationship between land use and soil biodiversity in tropical soils. In addition to a description of standardized methods, there are detailed chapters on general concepts, sampling strategies and classification of land use and management. The book starts with the relationship between soil community and ecosystem services and goods from which functional groups are derived and target groups are selected. This is followed by a chapter on selection of sampling sites and requirements for replication emphasizing the need to design a sampling scheme that matches the objectives of the study. The integration of the standardized methods into a well-designed monitoring and sampling scheme makes this book valuable for everybody involved in monitoring changes in soil biodiversity.