After humans have used and abused land, ecosystem restoration efforts can transform the landscape into what it once was – a forest, grassland, wetland. But sometimes, even with our best efforts, the wanted plants and other organisms just don't take hold.

In a new study released in Nature Plants on Monday, scientists say they may have found a missing, vital component: microbes.

While the last couple of years have brought new understandings of how microbes interact with the human body, scientists have known that microbiota--or the bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates that live within the soil--are integral to ecosystem success. And some scientists had long theorized that transferring healthy soil from one site to unhealthy soil in other site could help restoration efforts.

With this 6-year experiment conducted by Dutch researchers, plots of old farmland were converted into grassland and heathland via soil inoculation, where the researchers spread small amounts of healthy soil over the old soil.