Now this is in the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau is where we first began to study microbiotic crusts. The Colorado Plateau contains many of the parklands in the western United States: the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and more. We have a lot of beautiful scenic areas in the arid West, and people go to the parks and look at the scenery, not realizing that down below there's something on the ground. If we looked at the ground, it turns out to be covered with a soil crust that is composed of lichens, mosses and algae.

This particular crust is from the San Rafael Swell. It's the Colorado Plateau site I'm studying. This one here is particularly nice. You'll note it is like a little castle. It has these little pedicels. So this is a pediceled crust. It's very fragile. You step on this, it's history, so one of the things they emphasize in the parks and in park websites is, "Don't step on the crust". That's one of the main messages because it's very fragile.

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