Wow! I'm in undergrad and designing a research project right now that is specifically looking for a relationship between hydrocarbons from vehicle fluids and density of a microbiome in soil. It's a little more involved than that, but I am just really glad this article is drawing attention to soils in particular.
Everything is interconnected, and bacteria and fungi colonies (for example) are just as important as plants and animals in the food web. We depend on a large diversity of organisms, and that diversity is something that has been rapidly declining.