Solar Panels Nurse Desert Soil Back to Life

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https://eos.org/articles/solar-panels-nurse-desert-soil-back-to-life

By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Cultivating delicate soil crust in the shade of solar panels might boost the recovery of arid land. Biological soil crusts go by many names. A living ecosystem of cyanobacteria, lichen, moss, and algae, the crusts grow on arid soils on all continents, even Antarctica. Biocrust coats 12% of the planet’s surface and contains most of a desert’s ecological diversity in just the first few centimeters of soil. But the crust is easily broken (even a footstep can crush it), and operations such as ranching and farming have destroyed crust around the world. ...In a new study, the researchers claimed that solar farms within the Phoenix metro area could serve as biocrust nurseries for little cost; a large-scale effort could supply enough biocrust to cover most of the fallow farmland in surrounding Maricopa County within 5 years....

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