How do earthworms benefit us as humans?

Answer 1

As earthworms feed, they normally move through the soil and make small spaces. The spaces created by earthworms in the soil make aeration successful and thus enrich the soil with important nutrients.

Answer 2

Improve the physical structure of the soil

- Improve water filtration rates and absorption rates helping the soil to drain better. Less runoff equals less watering and less erosion.

- The tunneling activity improves soil aeration, porosity, and permeability.

- Increase moisture absorption and moisture available to plants. Castings absorb water faster than soil; castings hold more water than equivalent amounts of soil.

- Castings have the ability to absorb moisture from the air and hold it in a manner that plants can use.

- The tunneling activity of worms helps breakup hardpan and other compacted soils.

Improve soil fertility

- Bring up minerals from deep in the subsurface that are often in short supply in surface layers

- Removes litter from soil surface - earthworms eat the litter and leave the nutrients in their castings for plants to use as a natural fertilizer that is non-polluting.

- Help compost residues and waste products, bacteria in a worm's gut help destroy harmful chemicals and breakdown organic wastes

- Create fertile root channels - the mucus lining of abandoned burrows are an excellent source of nutrients

- Make plant nutrients more available, worms concentrate minerals in their castings in a form that is easy for plants to absorb

- Worms neutralize soil pH, analysis shows that the product coming out of the back end of a worm is closer to neutral than what goes in the front end.

Improve plant growth and health

- Earthworms help eliminate thatch in lawns and grassy areas by eating and digesting the plant debris

- Studies have shown that soils rich in earthworms have less of the harmful nematodes

- Earthworms create soil conditions that discourage populations of soil organisms such as insects, nematodes and others that are harmful to plants.

Answer 3

They break up the soil and aerate it, this also aids soil drainage.. They also introduce leaves and other material from the surface into lower soil layers.

Answer 4

they fertilize soil and dispose of waste.

Answer 5

by eating dirt.