Biological Soil Crusts: An Organizing Principle in Drylands

This volume summarizes our currentunderstanding of biological soil crusts (biocrusts), which are omnipresent indryland regions. Since they cover the soil surface, they influence, or evencontrol, all surface exchange processes. Being one of the oldest terrestrialcommunities, biocrusts comprise a high diversity of cyanobacteria, algae,lichens and bryophytes together with uncounted bacteria, and fung...