By Sofia Horn, Biology Major, Mentor William Bieker. Due to increasing challenges with climate change, there have been and will continue to be more droughts across the world specifically in dryer regions like New Mexico. In the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, the amount of precipitation has decreased, and the average temperature has increased leading to a dryer, more fragile climate. With this comes a stress on biocrusts (biological soil crusts) which are communities of cyanobacteria, mosses, lichens, algae, and micro fungi that live on top of the soil and are a key part to any arid or semi-arid ecosystem. These communities are beneficial all around the world, stabilizing soil, providing nutrients for plants, performing nitrogen fixation, and storing water. Research will uncover the most resilient organisms in these communities and bring light to the importance of biodiversity in biocrusts. For this community project, I am making stickers to inform people to leave the biocrust as it is and a poster to inform people of the implications biocrust has on an ecosystem, allowing people to take action to protect biocrust and their key roles in helping drying landscapes. Biocrust is a crucial component in desert biomes like the Sevilleta and understanding different microorganisms in those communities and how they are affected by drought can determine how ecosystems are impacted and change. This is important to the public because it shows that biocrusts with higher drought tolerance will be able to adapt to the changing climate and allows people to protect the unique biodiversity in New Mexico.
