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The Importance of Cryptobiotic Soil and How Earth Law Can Help — Earth Law Center [1]

['Guest User']

Date: 2024-09

Plant Life

Crypto also plays other roles in helping the plant life around it grow. Sand is not a great place for seeds to land. This loose substance causes plant seeds to get buried in areas that have little to no nutrients or it causes them to continuously blow through the wind, never to root into the ground.

Crypto catches these seeds on its hard surface and gives them a safe, nutrient rich area to grow. The dark color of crypto also keeps the ground that it is on the right temperature for seed germination. Plants that thrive in the presence of crypto include Sixweeks Fescue, Desert Blazing Star, Rock-Cress Prostrate Summercypress, Blue Flax, Mountain Peppergrass and Scarlet Globemallow.

However, there are plants that do not do well in crypto. Due to the hardness of the top layer of crypto it limits large seeds from being able to burrow themselves and germinate. These large seeds however are not usually native species therefore crypto also prevents invasive species from being able to grow and spread.

Nitrogen Fixation and other Nutrients

Cryptobiotic soil also helps with the process of nitrogen fixation. Plants need nitrogen to assist in the creation of amino acids, proteins and DNA. Without the help of nitrogen fixation especially in the desert where there is very little access to nutrients the fight for a plant to stay alive would be futile. Crypto contains denitrifying bacteria which assists in transforming the nitrogen in the atmosphere into a type of nitrogen that plants can use.

Crypto is actually the dominant source of nitrogen in the desert, meaning that plants can’t get their nitrogen fix from anywhere else. Crypto’s hard top layer also provides a place for nutrients to cling to such as calcium, potassium, and manganese. These nutrients bind to the cryptobiotic soil and are in turn available to the plants around it.

Threats to Cryptobiotic Soil

Foot Traffic

The biggest threat that cryptobiotic soil faces is our very feet. Even though crypto is such an important piece of the desert it is extremely fragile. One boot print can destroy hundreds and even thousands of years of growth.

Livestock

The desert is not meant to sustain thousands of cattle moving through its plains and rolling hills. The excessive grazing and trampling of the native species turns thousands of miles of once thriving lands into barren sand dunes.

Military Activities

The arid desert lands of North America is the perfect space for military activities such as testing new artillery to hosting bootcamp. The small amount of people that live in this region gives the military carte blanche to do as they please which has resulted in mass destruction of the native species and miles of crypto.

Wildfires

You hear all the time about the wildfires in California but what about the wildfires in the arid deserts of North America? Utah is even ranked one of the most vulnerable states to wildfires. Just looking at it you can see how one tiny little flame can spread across the countryside in a matter of minutes.

Entire valleys of plants are burnt to ash due to these rampant fires and crypto is no exception. Crypto can survive low intensity fires but high intensity fires can destroy miles of well-established crypto and high intensity fires are more than common due to the dry sage brush growing in these areas.

How Long Does It Take Crypto to Recover?

Even though crypto is such a much-needed piece of the desert environment it is extremely fragile and takes a significant amount of time to recover. Crypto is most vulnerable when it is dry, which is most of the year due to the small amounts of rain the desert receives. When dry crypto is trampled by feet, livestock, ATV’s and whatever else humans bring into the desert it can take up to 250 years for that one patch to recover.

After one patch of destroyed crypto causes sandblasting which often buries other crypto covered areas. Visual recovery can take 1-7 years in favorable conditions. After that it can take up to 45 years for lichens to reappear and 250 years for mosses meaning that if an area is destroyed today it can take up to eight generations for that area of crypto to be fully recovered as long as there are favorable conditions. If not in a matter of just a few years that area will become sand dunes. Barren, dry, and lifeless.

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[1] Url: https://www.earthlawcenter.org/blog-entries/2019/6/the-importance-cryptobiotic-soil-and-how-earth-law-can-help

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