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<oai_dc:dc xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:oai_dc="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/ http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd">
  <dc:contributor>Sasha C. Reed</dc:contributor>
  <dc:creator>Scott Ferrenberg</dc:creator>
  <dc:date>2017</dc:date>
  <dc:description>&lt;p&gt;Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are communities of microbes, lichens and bryophytes living at the soil surface in drylands (Fig. 1; Belnap &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2016). Biocrusts occur on all continents and can comprise a majority of cover in some systems (Belnap &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2016). While species diversity and distributions have long been a research focus, interest in controls on community composition and cover has expanded as biocrusts are increasingly recognized for their roles in ecosystem functioning (Deane-Coe and Stanton, 2017). For example, biocrust organisms can stabilize soils (Belnap &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2016; Faist &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2017), fix atmospheric carbon (C) (Sancho &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2016), and serve as the foremost source of ‘new’ soil nitrogen (N) in drylands, via N&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; fixation (Barger &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2016) These contributions to gross primary production and soil fertility could be quite large, as high-end estimates suggest biocrusts and similar communities of bryophytes and lichens might account for 10% of terrestrial C- and 50% of N-fixation globally (Elbert &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2012). Yet verifying these and other biocrust roles in ecosystem functioning is complicated by limited knowledge of biocrust cover and composition across the vast dryland biome (Ferrenberg &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., 2017).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was against this backdrop that ‘Biocrust3: the 3&lt;sup&gt;rd&lt;/sup&gt; International workshop on biological soil crusts’ was held in Moab, UT, USA, on 26-30 September 2016. The workshop brought together over 50 scientists from 21 countries and six continents, and included numerous biocrust science pioneers (Fig. 2). The meeting was notable for its cross-scale focus, discussion of novel molecular and imaging techniques, and sessions on mapping and restoring biocrusts in a changing world. Here, we synthesize a central theme that emerged from Biocrust3, namely &lt;i&gt;the potential for combining cutting edge tools with studies focused on organismal traits, ecosystem functions, and global change biology to advance the frontier of biocrust ecology.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</dc:description>
  <dc:format>application/pdf</dc:format>
  <dc:identifier>10.1111/nph.14826</dc:identifier>
  <dc:language>en</dc:language>
  <dc:publisher>Wiley</dc:publisher>
  <dc:title>Biocrust ecology: Unifying micro- and macro-scales to confront global change</dc:title>
  <dc:type>article</dc:type>
</oai_dc:dc>