The other place that a lot of these crusts have been studied is in the Great Basin Desert. I think the reason this is so is that the institutions with researchers studying crusts, Brigham Young University, Utah State University, and the University of Utah, have the Great Basin sort of in their back yard. This is in Utah where you have a lot of shrublands. This is a mixed community of sage brush, greasewood, salt bush, and other desert shrubs. Now the crust here looks very different. It's not pediceled. It's sort of flat. You get small polygons that may be defined by these vascular plant ceilings that are coming up in the cracks, but all throughout the lighter-colored area crust is present. One thing that is interesting in both this picture and the pictures have I shown you is that the dominant form of plant cover in these shrublands is microbiotic crust. That's true for much of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau.

Here is another site. This is in the Tintic Mountains. This is nice because it shows the pediceled algal crust in the middle foreground, while you can note that there are a lot of mosses growing underneath the shrubs. Mosses are often a significant component underneath the shrubs. Then we have crusts that are primarily lichenized. All of the very darkened material is lichen crust. These lichens come in lots of different colors but black is the most common color. We have some white ones and pink ones, but they are mostly black and brown.

Narrative Index

Table of Contents

BioForum Index

AE Partners Collection Index

Activities Exchange Index