Multi-species fog cultivation of biocrust to use for and inform restoration recipies

April 2021-August 2022

Creating and optimizing methods to cultivate biological soil crusts (biocrust), as well as performing various measurements, such as hydrology experiments and chlorophyll a extractions, to effectively use biocrust in restoration of degraded ecosystems.

Bowker Lab, School of Forestry/ Department of Physics and Astronomy
https://bowkerlab.blogspot.com/

NASA/Arizona Space Grant Consortium

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are a biological community creating a protective skin at the surface of soil. Biocrust consists of mosses, lichens, liverworts, and cyanobacteria that provide various functions, including stabilizing soil surfaces and nutrient cycling. Loss of biocrust due to climate change and land use has led to ecosystem degradation. We need biocrust cultivation methods for reintroductions into degraded ecosystems. We built an experimental fog chamber to grow biocrust organisms for use in restoration. We selected 2 lichens (Cladonia, Peltigera) and 2 mosses (Syntrichia, Homalothecium) based on their high abundance and ecological relevance in intermountain west biocrust communities. Because these organisms can reproduce asexually, we were also interested in determining if sieved (disaggregated tissue) or intact (2cm cores of whole tissue) samples would grow better. We hypothesized that the less-disturbed intact group would grow more than the sieved group, and the mosses would grow faster than the notoriously recalcitrant lichens. We sieved and cored-out five replicates of each genus controlling for biomass, then placed them into the fog chamber to be monitored by point-intercept cover. Results showed growth in all genera, with Syntrichia increasing the most with >200% increase in healthy tissue, and sieved increasing more than intact cores. Our research shows that fog cultivation is viable for these four biocurst taxa, and demonstrates that disaggregating colonies can improve productivity. Further development of biocrust cultivation will allow biocrust to be efficiently reintroduced into degraded ecosystems, especially as climate change and land degradation advance.