Lydia Bailey, Cara Lauria, Sierra Jech, Madeline Mayorga, Jasmine Anenberg, Keven Griffen, Lea Condon, Kyle Doherty, Colin Tucker, Philip Ramsey, Helen Ivy Rowe, Sasha Reed, Anita Antoninka, Rebecca Durham, Brianne Cooke, Kara Gibson, Darren Olney, Seth Charley, Ben Covington, Nelly Nelson, Amanda Gonzalez, Sean Pablo, Terrin Bia, Michael Sloan, Hilina Yohannes Kebede, Pete Fule, Henry Grover, Kara Dohrenwend, Matthew Bowker
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts)-thin, coherent soil surface layers aggregated and inhabited by communities of tiny photoautotrophic and heterotrophic organisms-support ecosystem functioning in drylands and influence the Earth system.Biocrust loss due to disturbance, global change, and land use leads to altered hydrological function, susceptibility to erosion, diminished biogeochemical cycling, with consequences extending to regional and global environmental quality and ecosystem service provisioning.To restore degraded drylands, specific techniques could inform how to: 1. produce biocrust biota ex-situ for use as an inoculum in degraded environments, then 2. encourage the establishment of the inoculum in high-stress environments.To re-establish lost biocrusts, a promising pathway could be the integration of adding biocrust biota (inoculation), ensuring that it stays where applied (retention), and softening environmental stresses and limitations (amelioration) at approximately the same time.Several techniques, most of them developed in only the past few years, demonstrate this integration: biocrust sods, cloths, pellets, capsules, and slurries.Biocrust sods are fabric-reinforced patches of biocrust growing on soil, produced in farms, and https://doi.org/10.