Climate Change Leads to Decline in Lichen Biocrusts

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https://eos.org/articles/climate-change-leads-to-decline-in-lichen-biocrusts


By Derek Smith, Eos/AGU. 


Excerpt: Biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, are communities of living organisms at the soil surface and are known as the “living skin” of dryland ecosystems. They cement soil grains together, thereby protecting dryland soils from erosion. Biocrusts also add critical nutrients to the soil by converting nitrogen in the atmosphere to ammonia, which serves as a kind of fertilizer for plants and microbes. Unfortunately, trampling by livestock and such human activity as driving vehicles off-road make biocrust survival difficult. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America has suggested that there’s another phenomenon that biocrusts are sensitive to: climate change. ...The research was conducted on the Colorado Plateau within the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. ...Increasing summertime temperatures best explained the decline in lichen cover; lichen cover was lowest in years with the hottest maximum temperatures in June....  

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