Hotspots of biogeochemical activity linked to aridity and plant traits across global drylands.

Perennial plants create productive and biodiverse hotspots, known as fertile islands, beneath their canopies. These hotspots largely determine the structure and functioning of drylands worldwide. Despite their ubiquity, the factors controlling fertile islands under conditions of contrasting grazing by livestock, the most prevalent land use in drylands, remain virtually unknown.

Cyanobacterial community composition and their functional shifts associated with biocrust succession in the Gurbantunggut Desert.

Cyanobacteria, as key biocrust components, provide a variety of ecosystem functions in drylands. In this study, to identify whether a cyanobacterial community shift is involved in biocrust succession and whether this is linked to altered ecological functions, we investigated cyanobacterial composition, total carbon and nitrogen contents of biocrusts in the Gurbantunggut Desert. Our findings showed that the biocrust cyanobacteria in the Gurbantunggut desert were mostly filamentous, coexisting with abundant unicellular colonial Chroococcidiopsis.

Small-Scale Spatial Heterogeneity of Photosynthetic Fluorescence Associated with Biological Soil Crust Succession in the Tengger Desert, China.

In dryland regions, biological soil crusts (BSCs) have numerous important ecosystem functions. Crust species and functions are, however, highly spatially heterogeneous and remain poorly understood at a range of scales. In this study, chlorophyll fluorescence imaging was used to quantify millimeter-scale patterns in the distribution and activity of photosynthetic organisms in BSCs of different successional stages (including cyanobacterial, lichen, moss three main successional stages and three intermixed transitional stages) from the Tengger Desert, China.