Climate change and human activity are destroying the layers of fungi, lichen, and bacteria that protect deserts from erosion.
the small town of Moab, Utah, located on the Colorado Plateau in the southwest of the US, soil ecologistis hopscotching on copper-toned sandstone to avoid stepping on the desert’s black, burnt-looking crust of soil. “Don’t bust the crust,” the saying here goes. “Don’t tiptoe on the crypto.”
The plateau’s biocrust is easily identifiable under a bright yolk sun: a dark, bumpy surface that stretches between shrubs, like snakeweed and yucca, and the towering buttes and mesas that make up the Colorado Plateau’s iconic landscape. It’s here that Finger-Higgens pricks metal pin flags into square grids that crisscross 12 football-field-sized plots of land.
Finger-Higgen calls the plots of land here “pristine.” By this, she means no cattle have grazed on the land, and bikers and hikers are prohibited. Pristine is an important distinction. If you’ve been to Moab and the surrounding canyonlands, you’ll know that all-terrain vehicles roar out of town and through the landscape, usually on designated roads but sometimes swerving off-piste and into unpaved desert. Cattle graze through the land, and enthusiastic hikers tromp the soil in boots.
The microbial filaments in the crust can resist strong winds due to their “tensile strength”—how much they can be pulled before breaking. However, they are vulnerable to compressional forces, such as a human foot punching through the crust, which can leave sun-loving cyanobacteria, lichens, and mosses buried with no light.
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