Hold That Arid Western Soil!

There's all sorts of biological activity going on in even the most arid soil, and killing those microrganisms, say, by running offroad vehicles over them, can lead to the generation of beaucoup dust. The people in Moab, Utah are learning this the hard way:

Taking care not to disturb the soil, Belnap scrambles up the rocks and picks up a sample.

"So here's a nicely developed soil crust. All those different colors are different lichens," Belnap says. "We have mosses in here as well, we have cyanobacteria in here as well, and this is absolutely stable from both wind and water erosion."

The cyanobacteria themselves are microscopic, but they create strong threads. Belnap holds up a clump of dirt. Another clump dangles from a tiny thread. These threads do an amazing job of holding the soil together, she says.

The cyanobacteria grow quickly, but the mosses and lichens do not. Belnap says it has taken hundreds of years for them to grow here. And in the Mojave Desert, it took more like a thousand years.

That has huge implications for what Belnap really cares about: restoring the biological crust on these disturbed lands. She wants to stop the blowing dust.