ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Climate change and physical disturbance cause similar community shifts in biological soil crusts.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
65 citing papers in PubMed.
- Encapsulation-mediated bioformulation of biocrust inoculants: microbial delivery strategies for dryland soil restoration.Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
- Fog, Symbiosis, and Survival: The Ecological Architecture of the Grit Crust From the Atacama Desert Represents a Lichen Holobiome Rather Than a Soil Microbiome.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- The Microbial Network Stability in Cyanobacterial and Moss Biocrusts Respond Differently to Climate Warming.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Experimental evidence of a biological soil crust degradation climate warming amplification feedback.Communications earth & environment · 2026Article
- Climate and biocrust types jointly regulate soil multifunctionality and quality in drylands: evidence from the Gurbantunggut Desert.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Shrub mitigate the negative impacts of drought on the ecological adaptability of Syntrichia caninervis in the desert regions of Northwest China.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
- Quantifying potential abiotic drivers of the 'nurse plant effect' in two dominant shrub species of the northern Chihuahuan Desert.Oecologia · 2025Article
- Biocrusts alter the effects of long-term warming on soil respiration in a dryland ecosystem.Geoderma · 2025Article
- Life on the dry side: a roadmap to understanding desiccation tolerance and accelerating translational applications.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Chromosome-level genomes of two Bracteacoccaceae highlight adaptations to biocrusts.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Proposed Relationships Between Climate, Biological Soil Crusts, Human Health, and in Arid Ecosystems.GeoHealth · 2025Review
- Biocrusts Mediate the Niche Distribution and Diversity of Ammonia-Oxidizing Microorganisms in the Gurbantunggut Desert, Northwestern China.Microbial ecology · 2024Article
- eBryoSoil: a citizen science application to monitor changes in soil ecosystems.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Effects of mixed biocrusts on soil nutrients and bacterial community structure: a case study from Hilly Loess Plateau, China.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Cyanotoxin accumulation and growth patterns of biocrust communities under variable environmental conditions.Toxicon: X · 2024Article
- Organizing a global list of cyanobacteria and algae from soil biocrusts evidenced great geographic and taxonomic gaps.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2024Review
- Remote sensing and spectroscopy of lichens.Ecology and evolution · 2024Review
- Editorial: Biological soil crusts: spatio-temporal development and ecological functions of soil surface microbial communities across different scales.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Prescribed fire regimes influence responses of fungal and bacterial communities on new litter substrates in a brackish tidal marsh.PloS one · 2024Article
- Deterministic processes influence bacterial more than fungal community assembly during the development of biological soil crusts in the desert ecosystem.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts)—communities of mosses, lichens, cyanobacteria, and heterotrophs living at the soil surface—are fundamental components of drylands worldwide, and destruction of biocrusts dramatically alters biogeochemical processes, hydrology, surface energy balance, and vegetation cover. Although there has been long-standing concern over impacts of physical disturbances on biocrusts (e.g., trampling by livestock, damage from vehicles), there is increasing concern over the potential for climate change to alter biocrust community structure. Using long-term data from the Colorado Plateau, we examined the effects of 10 y of experimental warming and altered precipitation (in full-factorial design) on biocrust communities and compared the effects of altered climate with those of long-term physical disturbance (>10 y of replicated human trampling). Surprisingly, altered climate and physical disturbance treatments had similar effects on biocrust community structure. Warming, altered precipitation frequency [an increase of small (1.2 mm) summer rainfall events], and physical disturbance from trampling all promoted early successional community states marked by dramatic declines in moss cover and increases in cyanobacteria cover, with more variable effects on lichens. Although the pace of community change varied significantly among treatments, our results suggest that multiple aspects of climate change will affect biocrusts to the same degree as physical disturbance. This is particularly disconcerting in the context of warming, as temperatures for drylands are projected to increase beyond those imposed as treatments in our study.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.