Webinar on biocrust restoration

The Bowker lab recently contributed a feature article to the Society of Ecological Restoration's newsletter on biocrust restoration.  The article can be found here: http://ser.org/resources/sernews/volume-30-issue-3-june-2016/Biocrust

As a complement to the article, members of the Bowker lab will be giving a webinar, sharing progress and plans for restoring biocrusts using the following approach: 1) Develop optimal culturing techniques; 2) Maximize field survivorship; 3) Develop, build and test field delivery mechanisms; and 4) Integrate techniques with current restoration practices.

The webinar will be from Thursday, August 4th, at 4-5pm EDT.  Please join us! http://ser.org/resources/resources-detail-view/upcoming-webinar-biocrusts-in-dryland-restoration

crustCover R Package

The Bowker Lab has developed an R package to characterize and quantify biocrust cover with photo data. This package is called crustCover, and is an adaptation of the methods in Fischer et al. (2012), which describes techniques to use visible light cameras in conjunction with a lens filter to calculate NDVI. This package is a work in progress, and input from the biocrust community on bugs encountered or ideas for improvements would be greatly appreciated. Please send reports or request for improvements to kd498@nau.edu.