Soil Seed Bank

soil seed bank, natural storage of seeds in the leaf litter, on the soil surface, or in the soil of many ecosystems, which serves as a repository for the production of subsequent generations of plants to enable their survival. The term soil seed bank can be used to describe the storage of seeds from a single species or from all the species in a particular area. Given the variety of stresses that ecosystems experience—such as cold, wildfire, drought, and disturbance—seed banks are often a crucial survival mechanism for many plants and maintain the long-term stability of ecosystems.