Pastoral systems worldwide secure rural livelihoods in the harshest environments on Earth. Their low productivity per area unit or head makes them the subject of much criticism with regard to their environmental impact, particularly in relation to global warming, desertification and land degradation. Such is the case of the traditional pastoral systems of Patagonia, a vast and isolated region where sedentary and mobile pastoralism coexist and contribute to shape landscapes and cultures. We argue that pastoral systems provide a wide range of ecosystem services that may compensate for their negative impact on the environment. We review the scarcely available evidence from Patagonia to identify ecosystem services and disservices associated with pastoralism, and pay special attention to the carbon balance: with C footprints between 10 to 40 kg CO₂-eq.kg⁻¹ carcass, pastoral systems in dry Patagonia are below or within the range of semi-extensive livestock systems worldwide (35–45 CO₂-eq. kg⁻¹ carcass). To inform development and policy, the assessment of trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services needs to incorporate the intertwined social and ecological dynamics of complex pastoral systems, along resource regenerative trajectories.

Soil health indicators based on microbial biodiversity are increasingly used in agricultural sustainability assessments. However, little is known about how microbial communities vary within micro-environmental gradients across different land uses, which is crucial for designing field sampling and monitoring protocols. Our objective was to assess how soil microbial communities changed with soil depth and spatial distance across land-use types. We sampled soils in four spatial distances (within 0.1–70 m) and four depths (within 0–40 cm) in forests, grasslands, and horticultural lands, and combined 16S rRNA gene sequencing, DNA quantification and soil chemical characterization to explore micro-environmental variation in microbial biomass, α-β-diversity, and communities’ assembly processes. Depth and spatial distance had differential effects on microbial biodiversity within different land uses. Microbial biomass was most sensitive to depth, α-diversity to spatial distance, and β-diversity to both depth and spatial distance. Deterministic processes dominate microbial communities’ assembly along depth in all land uses, which is a promising result for developing soil quality indicators based on microbial biodiversity. Overall, our results suggest that collecting soil samples separated by at least 12 m is adequate to capture biodiversity changes across land uses. However, collecting randomly within the first 10 cm is recommended for native forests, while systematic sampling within the first 20 cm is advised for grasslands and horticultural lands. Our findings underscore the need for land use-specific sampling frameworks in soil life-based sustainability assessments for meaningful regional comparisons.