Future of Northern Arizona's Lanscape Panel Discussion, Dec. 3 6:30 PM, Coconino Center for the Arts

Please come out to the Future of Northern Arizona Landscapes event next week. Three NAU School of Forestry professors will be presenting short talks and taking questions, along with 2 other speakers from NAU and the Grand Canyon Trust. For my part, I will focus on ways to assist migration of plants by co-migrating soil organisms. The event is sponsored by The Flagstaff Climate March and is one of a series of events coinciding with the COP 21 (UN Climate talks) meeting in Paris. Read more about it here http://www.flagclimatemarch.com/events.html.

Publication backlog post….three from earlier this year

The Spanish post-doctoral power trio is at it again. Somebody hire these men! Santi & Manu have published the results of our fun and productive road trip across the Colorado Plateau back in summer of 2012 (?), part of a global drylands dataset dreamed up by Fernando Maestre. Raul has published some more work from his N-deposition study using an array of study sites across Spain.






Soliveres S., Maestre F.T., Ulrich W., Manning P., Boch S., Bowker M.A., Prati D., Delgado-Baquerizo M., Quero J.L., Schoning I., Gallardo A., Weisser W., Muller J., Socher S.A., Garcia-Gomez M., Ochoa V., Schulze E.D., Fischer M., Allan E. 2015. Intransitive competition is widespread in plant communities and maintains their species richness. Ecology Letters 18:790-798.

Ochoa-Hueso R, Delgado-Baquerizo M, Gallardo A., Bowker M.A., Maestre F.T. Climatic conditions, soil fertility and atmospheric nitrogen deposition largely determine the structure and functioning of microbial communities in biocrust-dominated Mediterranean drylands. Plant and Soil doi:10.1007/s11104-015-2695y.

Delgado-Baquerizo M. Maestre F.T., Eldridge D.J., Bowker M.A., Ochoa V., Val J., Singh B.K. 2015. Biocrust-forming mosses mitigate the negative impacts of increasing aridity on ecosystem multifunctionality in drylands. New Phytologist doi:10.1111/nph.13688. 
(See also Research Highlight in Nature Plants Article Number 15177-15181).

CRC Features our Biocrust Restoration work

This fall we set up two experiments at the Canyonlands Research Center. In the first, we transplanted intact biocrusts to three "home" or "away" locations from 1200, 1600 and 2000m to determine if biocrusts are best adapted to their home environment, and thus need to be locally sourced for restoration. In a second experiment, we are testing method to successfully establish greenhouse-cultivated biocrusts to the field to maximize success for future restoration efforts.

You can read the Fall 2015 CRC newsletter, the Sundial, which highlights our work along with others doing important work on biocrust and vascular plant restoration: http://canyonlandsresearchcenter.org/

A rainbow over our newly-established biocrust common garden. Light rains welcome the biocrust transplants to their new home.

In a full-factorial experiment, we are testing methods to ease the transition of greenhouse cultivated biocrusts to the field to maximize establishment. Methods tested here include: hardening of inoculum, jute addition, and water addition for 2 weeks following introduction to the field.

Straw checkerboards show promise in stabilizing soils, and providing good habitat for biocrust establishment. We are testing it's effectiveness with no inoculum, greenhouse cultivated inoculum, or greenhouse cultivated and hardened inoculum.

Rooftop Mosscaping Project Begins on the Pods of the ARD Building at NAU

Today NAU grounds personnel and representatives from the Bowker Lab kicked off the first installation of biocrust mosses on a campus building roof.  The objective of the project is to create a zero maintenance and zero water input green space that can both sequester carbon and beautify the campus.

Much of the roof of the ARD building's Pods was already colonized by pioneer species of mosses including Bryum argenteum and Funari hygrometrica. These moss species, in addition to other species local to the greater Flagstaff area, were transplanted in a dense mosaic within view from the second floor of the building. This is the first of multiple efforts to develop the Pod roof, which will include native vascular plant species as well.

While mosses have been incorporated into green roof architecture globally, this concept has not been developed in the Southwestern US or other arid regions. The effort is the first of its kind, bringing biocrust restoration techniques developed at the Bowker lab to an urban context. We would like to thank NAU grounds for collaborating with University researchers to explore sustainable, climate conscious, landscaping.

Biocrust session in the books. Thanks!

The crusties & entourage taking over Dara Thai. We are stretching all the way to that back wall!

Huge thanks to everyone who made the biocrust session at the 13th Biennial Conference on Science & Management on the Colorado Plateau and Southwest Region a stunning success. Special thanks to the students who were the real organizers: Ana Giraldo (ASU), Carrie Havrilla (CU),  Chris Ives (NAU), Kristina Young (NAU). Thanks also the School of Forestry and Merriam-Powell Center (NAU), and USGS for making it all happen.

This is the third such session in a row, and the fourth if we go back a few years. 

We had friends and collaborators from as far as Missoula and Berkeley and Corvallis, and the usual suspects from Boulder, Moab, and Tempe.... cementing this as one of our favorite events. See you next time.

Biocrust Special Session of the Biennial Conference of Science and Management on the Colorado Plateau & Southwest Region

The Biennial Conference is here at NAU next week, and we really excited about the speakers presenting at the Biocrust Special Session, which is happening on Wednesday, October 7th in Agassiz room.

Here is a link to the conference schedule, which includes the biocrust special session: Biennial Conference schedule

Lab members presenting include:
Anita Antoninka
11:55–12:15 RESTORING THE LIVING SKIN OF THE EARTH: PROGRESS IN BIOCRUST RESTORATION IN THE GREAT BASIN AND CHIHUAHUAN DESERTS. ANTONINKA, A., M.A. Bowker, N. Barger, S. Reed, J. Belnap, K. Doherty

Kristina Young
1:35–1:55 USING BIOLOGICAL SOIL CRUST FOR SOIL STABILIZATION AND RESTORATION. YOUNG, K.E., M.A. Bowker, S.C. Reed, M.C. Duniway, and J. Belnap

Matthew Bowker
1:55–2:15 RAPID CULTIVATION OF N-FIXING LICHENS AND BIOCRUSTS FOR REHABILITATION OF DRYLANDS. BOWKER, M., A.J. Antoninka, S.C. Reed, K.D. Doherty, J. Belnap, N.N. Barge

Chris Ives
2:35–2:55 FIRE MOSS AS A TOOL FOR POST-WILDFIRE ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION. IVES, C.I.

Also be sure to check out Mike Remke's talk on Tuesday in the Genetic and Genomic Approaches for Mitigating Impacts of Climate Change and Exotic Species Invasion on Wildlands – Invited Session.
2:00–2:15 THE ROLE OF MYCORRHIZAE AND SOIL ORGANISM COMMUNITIES IN RESTORING A NATIVE GRASS, BOUTELOUA GRACILIS, IN THE FACE OF A DYNAMIC CLIMATES AND EXOTIC SPECIES INVASION. REMKE, M.J., M. Bowker, and N.C. Johnson

Finally, there is one additional biocrust talk by Carla Roybal outside the special session in the Plant Ecology General Session on Thursday in the Fremont Room, don't miss it!:
9:00–9:15 NUTRIENT ADDITION CHANGE NITROGEN FIXATION RATES OF COLORADO PLATEAU SOIL CRUST. ROYBAL, C.M., and S.C. Reed

Biocrust research with MPG Ranch(near Missoula, MT) is underway in the field and greenhouse! 

One might not think of biocrusts as critically important to ecosystem function in the intermountain west, but they are abundant, diverse and provide the same ecosystem functions we think about in more typical deserts. These functions include soil retention and stability, soil fertility and water capture.

Mosses and lichens are common under the canopies of shrubs and in plant interspaces.

In conjunction with MPG Ranch Researcher, Rebecca Durham, we have begun an extensive field survey to inventory the biocrust species present, as well as look for associations. We are interested to know how the biocrust community composition and abundance varies with aspect, elevation, soil types, and plant community. We are particularly interested to look for biocrust indicators found with native, invaded or otherwise disturbed plant communities. This information will help us set goals for restoration, and target species to use in restoration efforts.

Matt Bowker and Rebeccas Durham collecting biocrust data.

We recently completed the set up of two new new experiments using 5 moss and 3 lichen species collected from MPG Ranch.  The goals of these experiments are to:
1. Determine if we can grow these species, and if so, what conditions work best?
2. Look at competition/facilitation relationships among the lichens Diploschistes muscorum and Cladonia sp., and among the 5 moss species.
3. Determine which of these species might be best alone or in communities to use in field restoration experiments.

280 Experimental units are have been treated with various biocrust species alone or in mixes, and are being subjected to different watering regimes.

We're excited to note that our greenhouse biocrusts are already growing. We'll have results to share for filed and greenhouse work in the coming months.