I just want to touch very briefly on the Mojave Desert. We're doing some work at Fort Irwin and in Joshua Tree National Park. Naturalists at both sites are interested in conducting pilot crust reclamation studies. We're also doing some work in the Mojave National Reserve. My most recent funding is from the National Science Foundation. They actually are interested in looking at the biodiversity of these crusts. So we're going to be looking at crusts from the Mexican border all the way up to Kamloops, British Columbia. We're going to try to characterize the variability of these crusts among all these different sites. The Mojave Desert is one of the first regions at which we've taken a look.

In the few minutes left, I want to show you a little bit about how the Mojave crusts are quite different from what we have seen elsewhere. This is Joshua Tree National Park, a wonderful place to go if you haven't been there yet. I think it's one of the more under-visited national parks. Rock climbers go there. But it has some beautiful scenery and it also has a crust.

Although they are not as evident, there are some tiny little lichen crusts in this picture. The algal crust is much less developed. The soils are much coarser. I have a feeling that these crusts do not operate the same way as those in cool deserts. But we have a lot of lichen crusts. This picture was taken down in a wash where there are lichens but not much algae.

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