Cryptobiotic Soil, Canyonlands NP

‘Crypto’ meaning hidden and ‘bio’ meaning life is made up of five living organisms: cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, green algae, and micro fungi.
These organisms work together to form a hard black crust that helps with preventing erosion, absorbing rainfall, and provides nutrients for the growing plants around it.
Cryptobiotic soil is the glue that holds the desert together. It gives plants a safe sturdy place to grow, it protects the earth below it from washing away during rain, and it keeps the life that can survive the deserts harsh conditions from blowing away and turning a once green area into rolling barren sand dunes.
The top layer absorbs the rain keeping the area around it from washing away, as well as making water available for dryer seasons. In addition, when cryptobiotic soil is dry the organisms that it consists of lie dormant. When it rains however the mosses, lichens, cyanobacteria, algae, and fungi can move through the sand leaving behind a sheath on loose areas creating the beginnings of new crypto. Cryptobiotic soil also helps with the process of nitrogen fixation.
Cryptobiotic soil is very fragile particularly to footfall. After a patch of cryptobiotic soil is destroyed, this 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.