scholarly journals Rapidly restoring biological soil crusts and ecosystem functions in a severely disturbed desert ecosystem

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1260-1272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay P. Chiquoine ◽  
Scott R. Abella ◽  
Matthew A. Bowker
Keyword(s):  
Biological Soil Crusts ◽  
Desert Ecosystem ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Soil Crusts

Biological soil crusts in continental Antarctica: Garwood Valley, southern Victoria Land, and Diamond Hill, Darwin Mountains region

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Colesie ◽  
Maxime Gommeaux ◽  
T.G. Allan Green ◽  
Burkhard Büdel
Keyword(s):  
Soil Stabilization ◽  
Higher Plants ◽  
Biological Soil Crusts ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Dry Valleys ◽  
Cold Desert ◽  
Chlorophyll Contents ◽  
Green Algal ◽  
Soil Crusts ◽  
Continental Antarctica

AbstractBiological soil crusts are associations of lichens, mosses, algae, cyanobacteria, microfungi and bacteria in different proportions forming a thin veneer within the top centimetres of soil surfaces. They occur in all biomes, but particularly in arid and semi-arid regions, even in the most extreme climates. They carry out crucial ecosystem functions, such as soil stabilization, influencing water and nutrient cycles, and contribute to the formation of microniches for heterotrophic life. In continental Antarctica especially, these roles are essential because no higher plants provide such ecosystem services. We provide a detailed description of biological soil crusts from Garwood Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys region (78°S) and Diamond Hill (80°S) in the Darwin Mountains region. The coverage was low at 3.3% and 0.8% of the soil surface. At Garwood Valley the crusts were composed of green algal lichens, cyanobacteria, several species of green algae and the mossHennediella heimii(Hedw.) R.H. Zander. Diamond Hill crusts appear to be unique in not having any species of cyanobacteria. Major parts are embedded in the soil, and their thickness correlates with higher chlorophyll contents, higher soil organic carbon and nitrogen, which are fundamental components of this species poor cold desert zone.

scholarly journals Coverage and Rainfall Response of Biological Soil Crusts Using Multi-Temporal Sentinel-2 Data in a Central European Temperate Dry Acid Grassland

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 3093
Author(s):  
Jakob Rieser ◽  
Maik Veste ◽  
Michael Thiel ◽  
Sarah Schönbrodt-Stitt
Keyword(s):  
Biological Soil Crusts ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Temperate Climate ◽  
Higher Plant ◽  
Detection Analysis ◽  
Soil Crusts ◽  
Daily Precipitation Data ◽  
Northeastern Germany ◽  
Sentinel 2

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are thin microbiological vegetation layers that naturally develop in unfavorable higher plant conditions (i.e., low precipitation rates and high temperatures) in global drylands. They consist of poikilohydric organisms capable of adjusting their metabolic activities depending on the water availability. However, they, and with them, their ecosystem functions, are endangered by climate change and land-use intensification. Remote sensing (RS)-based studies estimated the BSC cover in global drylands through various multispectral indices, and few of them correlated the BSCs’ activity response to rainfall. However, the allocation of BSCs is not limited to drylands only as there are areas beyond where smaller patches have developed under intense human impact and frequent disturbance. Yet, those areas were not addressed in RS-based studies, raising the question of whether the methods developed in extensive drylands can be transferred easily. Our temperate climate study area, the ‘Lieberoser Heide’ in northeastern Germany, is home to the country’s largest BSC-covered area. We applied a Random Forest (RF) classification model incorporating multispectral Sentinel-2 (S2) data, indices derived from them, and topographic information to spatiotemporally map the BSC cover for the first time in Central Europe. We further monitored the BSC response to rainfall events over a period of around five years (June 2015 to end of December 2020). Therefore, we combined datasets of gridded NDVI as a measure of photosynthetic activity with daily precipitation data and conducted a change detection analysis. With an overall accuracy of 98.9%, our classification proved satisfactory. Detected changes in BSC activity between dry and wet conditions were found to be significant. Our study emphasizes a high transferability of established methods from extensive drylands to BSC-covered areas in the temperate climate. Therefore, we consider our study to provide essential impulses so that RS-based biocrust mapping in the future will be applied beyond the global drylands.

Discussion on wind factor influencing the distribution of biological soil crusts on surface of sand dunes

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 739
Author(s):  
Wu YongSheng ◽  
Erdun Hasi ◽  
Yin RuiPing ◽  
Zhang Xin ◽  
Ren Jie ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sand Dunes ◽  
Biological Soil Crusts ◽  
Soil Crusts
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