Improved appreciation of the functioning and importance of biological soil crusts in Europe: the Soil Crust International Project (SCIN)

Abstract

Here we report details of the European research initiative “Soil Crust International” (SCIN) focusing on the biodiversity of biological soil crusts (BSC, composed of bacteria, algae, lichens, and bryophytes) and on functional aspects in their specific environment. Known as the so-called “colored soil lichen community” (Bunte Erdflechtengesellschaft), these BSCs occur all over Europe, extending into subtropical and arid regions. Our goal is to study the uniqueness of these BSCs on the regional scale and investigate how this community can cope with large macroclimatic differences. One of the major aims of this project is to develop biodiversity conservation and sustainable management strategies for European BSCs. To achieve this, we established a latitudinal transect from the Great Alvar of Öland, Sweden in the north over Gössenheim, Central Germany and Hochtor in the Hohe Tauern National Park, Austria down to the badlands of Tabernas, Spain in the south. The transect stretches over 20° latitude and 2,300 m in altitude, including natural (Hochtor, Tabernas) and semi-natural sites that require maintenance such as by grazing activities (Öland, Gössenheim). At all four sites BSC coverage exceeded 30 % of the referring landscape, with the alpine site (Hochtor) reaching the highest cyanobacterial cover and the two semi-natural sites (Öland, Gössenheim) the highest bryophyte cover. Although BSCs of the four European sites share a common set of bacteria, algae (including cyanobacteria) lichens and bryophytes, first results indicate not only climate specific additions of species, but also genetic/phenotypic uniqueness of species between the four sites. While macroclimatic conditions are rather different, microclimatic conditions and partly soil properties seem fairly homogeneous between the four sites, with the exception of water availability. Continuous activity monitoring of photosystem II revealed the BSCs of the Spanish site as the least active in terms of photosynthetic active periods.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10531-014-0645-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Uncovering biological soil crusts: Carbon content and structure of intact Arctic, Antarctic and alpine biological soil crusts

“…Green algae are rarely the dominant crustforming organisms and they occur in low abundance or may be present as dormant resting stages, which are hard to detect. This is supported by other studies that detected, at least from Hochtor, Austria, only a minor proportion of green algae (Büdel et al, 2014;Peer et al, 2013). 20…”

“…This becomes even more interesting when other findings are considered, where Büdel et al, (2014) showed that within the microbiome of BSC from Hochtor, cyanobacteria contributed only 1.6 % to the total bacterial diversity, whereas we show here that they occupy 20 % of space within the crust.…”

“…Snow cover lasts for 270-300 days. Under these climatic conditions development of soil and the subsequent establishment of higher plants is extremely slow but high coverage of BSCs are recorded (Büdel et al, 2014). 30 The Arctic region is represented by two localities in Spitsbergen,11°55'23.84''E) and Geopol (78°56'58.38''N,11°28'35.64''E), with a polar tundra climate (Peel et al, 2007, Vogel et al, 2012 is an international research platform on the Brøgger peninsula at the coast of Kongsfjorden.…”

“…Samples from Hochtor (Austria, alpine) were taken during the Soil Crust International Project (SCIN) in July, 2012 (Büdel et al, 2014). Samples from Livingston Island (Antarctica) were collected during February 2015 and samples from Svalbard, 20…”

Potentials of the microalgae inoculant in restoration of biological soil crusts to combat desertification

“…Possibly the main advantage would be the acceleration in the succession procedure, a process that normally happens very slowly in case of natural systems (Mor-Mussery et al 2015). In addition, new restoration systems make the ability to design a real BSC for any required special restoration conditions possible (Büdel et al 2014).…”