The Times-Independent

Carbon, climate and ‘charismatic’ crusts

The woman-powered world of Moab’s biocrust research


A hundred feet above the Colorado River, Sasha Reed is standing in a gently sloping field veined with tubes and wires and dotted with heat lamps and hunched-over scientists.

USGS Research Ecologist Sasha Reed, right, discusses plant photosynthesis with Biological Science technician Cara Lauria at the Castle Valley research site.
Photos by Sophia Fisher

Squinting against the already-formidable morning sun, Reed, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, sweeps her hand across the landscape’s immensities: rolling orange dunes giving way to the vast vertical walls of the river corridor.

Drylands like these, Reed says, have massive implications for future climate change.

“They make up over 40% of our earth’s land surface,” she says. “They’re our planet’s largest biome.”

What scientists are learning at this research site, on Castle Valley’s doorstep, is shaping global understandings of how drylands work, and how they could change a world of shifting climates.

“This is the only experiment of its kind in any desert,” said Reed. “… What we’re learning here, people are really interested in around the world.”

Lauria and visiting scientist Anastasia Makhnykina manipulate an autochamber, a device that measures carbon dioxide concentrations.

Though it draws global interest, the science taking place on these slopes boils down to organisms that stretch barely a few inches off the ground: biological soil crusts, known shorthand as biocrusts.

Familiar to many in southeastern Utah, biocrusts are miniscule communities of cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, protists and other organisms. Often black and pinnacled, these fragile crusts are responsible for important ecosystem functions like cycling nutrients and water and holding down the otherwise-dusty desert soil.

Besides being home to diverse and abundant biocrusts, the Moab area also supports a stronghold of biocrust research that’s powered in no small part by women scientists.

“This is a wonderful community to be a part of and a wonderful place to do science,” said Brooke Osborne, a USGS research ecologist. “…We’re known for these beautiful landscapes … [that] draw millions of visitors every year. But they also make this an ideal place to do important ecological research.”

Crust rising

Moab wasn’t always a hotbed of biocrust research. The progenitor of that community, according to many local scientists, is Jayne Belnap, a USGS ecologist who last year was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

Belnap said she was first introduced to biocrusts in Mack, Colorado, in the late 1980s, when researchers were stumped as to why grazed pastures were experiencing far higher rates of runoff than nearby non-grazed areas.

“They were just so cute that I got hooked,” Belnap said.

Although indigenous communities in southeastern Utah had long known of biocrusts, Western science had largely dismissed the microscopic ecosystems.

“You couldn’t get money to study it because they were so little; nobody thought they really mattered,” Belnap said.

Fast-forward several decades, however, and through Belnap and others’ efforts, Moab now comprises one of the country’s few nexuses of biocrust research.

The local USGS office employs a handful of biocrust scientists who, with teams of technicians, are running some of the world’s most expansive experiments on biocrusts and their relevance to the globe.

At the Castle Valley site, plots are exposed to higher temperatures and different frequencies and intensities of rain to test how biocrusts and native plants might react to a warming, changing climate.

Other research sites in Arches and Canyonlands national parks are examining the effects of physical disturbance, like trampling, and increased tailpipe emissions.

Many of these experiments are the first, biggest or longest-running of their kind. With biocrust and drylands research relatively new to Western science, the research community is still figuring out some basic principles of how those organisms and ecosystems work.

“People know biocrusts are important and they play really foundational and large roles in ecosystem functions,” said Michala Phillips, a former USGS ecologist. “…And then, there’s a lot that we don’t know. That’s what makes it a really exciting field to be a part of.”

“One of the biggest unknowns is, how do we restore them?” asked Cara Lauria, a USGS biological science technician. “There are so many mixed results.”

One central question is how biocrusts store carbon, and how much. As a potentially world-warming element, carbon, and how it’s stored, has major implications for climate change.

Precious little, however, is known about how biocrusts and drylands store carbon.

“If drylands aren’t well-represented in [global climate] models, it could really cause some problems down the line,” Osborne said.

The research is also helping correct a skew in existing ecological principles, which Phillips said are often derived with little thought to drylands. That’s part of the reason, she said, that Moab’s research is so important.

“There’s been a lot of excitement about biocrust and biocrust research, and I definitely think a lot of it is due to the hard work [Belnap’s] done, both with communications in the science community and outside of it,” Phillips said.

An ‘inspiring’ community

Part of the reason for the quick growth in local biocrust research, Phillips said, is the makeup of the community.

“I think this community exists because of people like [Belnap] and [Reed] who have built the space for this to happen,” she said. “I also think it’s really impressive that this group of scientists spans career stages and research backgrounds …. everyone is bringing something different to the table.”

Phillips added that the group is inclusive and extremely collaborative. For some, that’s a result of the community’s female bent and its commitment to harnessing science for positive local change.

“There’s a lot of brilliant women here asking these questions and working together in creative ways,” Osborne agreed. “Something they do particularly well … is interacting directly with resource managers from different land managers.”

Osborne also recently received the L’Oreal USA For Women in Science fellowship for her work on carbon storage in drylands as well as her advocacy around promoting diverse voices in science.

“When I give talks and presentations I include a lot of images, and it’s all these wonderful women scientists,” she said. “I think just seeing that community can help empower more people to join.”

The crux of the crust

Back at the research site, Reed treads on sandbags laid between two plots. One holds a flat, pale-orange crust that’s barely discernible from pure sand, while the other houses dark, pinnacled crusts splotched with fuzzy mosses and lichens.

They demonstrate the damage that prolonged higher temperatures have on biocrusts trying to come back after disturbance.

“We’re trying to understand for plants and biocrusts and soils, what will we expect in the future?” Reed asks. “Can we learn how they’re going to respond to climactic change through these treatments?”

Perhaps, if science is going the way Reed and Belnap hope. Both of them cited growing scientific and non-scientific interest in biocrusts and drylands.

“People understand that drylands are a major contributor to global things, whether it be carbon cycles or dust cycles or rainfall,” Belnap said. “…People are starting to recreate here in deserts more. Now, you have an audience that’s been to Moab.”

For many Moab scientists, the biocrusts are just as charismatic as the place they hold down.

“To me, they’re almost like a coral reef in a sense,” Lauria said. “It creates structure, and then things inhabit those structures.”

“[It’s] something that we can see and touch and watch it work,” Osborne said. “We can see it hold the place in place.”