Climate change is killing off soil organisms critical for some of Earth's ecosystems [View all]

[NNadir]

This article is in the current issue of Science. It's a news item and I believe it's open sourced.

Climate change is killing off soil organisms critical for some of Earth’s ecosystems

Subtitle:

Lichens can’t take the heat, with disastrous implications for arid places

Science News 11 APR 2022 BY ELIZABETH PENNISI

Excerpts:

Just as our skin is key to our well-being, the “skin” covering desert soils is essential to life in dry places. This “biocrust,” made up of fungi, lichens, mosses, blue-green algae, and other microbes, retains water and produces nutrients that other organisms can use. Now, new research shows climate change is destroying the integrity of this skin.

Such “biocrusts” cover 12% of all land on Earth, so keeping them healthy is essential for the health of the planet. As they disappear, deserts may expand, says Bettina Weber, an ecologist at the University of Graz who was not involved with the work.

Until the 1980s, few scientists paid much mind to the crunching underfoot while traipsing through grasslands, deserts, and other drylands. The crackling, it turns out, comes from centuries-old conglomerations of life that help retain what little water there is and produce life-sustaining nutrients such as nitrogen and carbon. “Biocrusts play critical roles in arid ecosystems,” says Trent Northen, a biochemist studying microbial communities at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Researchers had assumed anything in a biocrust could take the heat, given that they thrive where it’s dry and hot. But in 2013, scientists discovered climate change is changing the microbial composition of biocrusts. A new survey of these organisms in a pristine grassland in Canyonlands National Park in Utah has uncovered a hidden vulnerability of some of the lichens in these crusts.

Twice a year since 1996, researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have headed to 12 soccer field–size plots in the park’s grasslands to take stock of the kinds and amounts of lichens, mosses, fungi, and microbes—and the surrounding plants. The original goal was to monitor the spread of a nonnative plant called cheatgrass and its effects on the biocrust and other life. The researchers were able to compare their findings with results of a study in the park done in the late 1960s. “It is truly impressive that the authors have these records over such a long timespan,” Weber says.

The U.S. Southwest is rapidly warming, and Canyonlands is no exception, says USGS ecologist Rebecca Finger-Higgens, who led the analysis. Weather measurements over the past 50 years reveal temperatures in that park have increased 0.27°C each decade, and recent summers have been particularly warm.

At the same time, almost all the lichens have been waning, particularly the kinds that help convert nitrogen in the air to a form organisms can use, Finger-Higgens and her team report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

Don't worry, be happy.

Expanding deserts are good for solar thermal facilities after all and they're great, since they bring down birds precooked and ready to eat.

I've been hearing how solar and wind would save us all my whole life, so are we there yet? Surely we are. No?

Chant after me: Solar, Wind, Battery, Electric Car...Solar, Wind, Battery, Electric Car... Solar, Wind, Battery, Electric Car...Solar, Wind, Battery, Electric Car...

Maybe you'll feel better.

I don't, but who cares what I think?

History will not forgive us, nor should it.