Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin
The Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert on Earth, presenting precarious conditions for biological activity. In the arid coastal belt, life is restricted to areas with fog events that cause almost daily wet–dry cycles. In such an area, we discovered a hitherto unknown and unique ground cove...
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ftsubggeo:oai:e-docs.geo-leo.de:11858/9503 2023-05-15T18:02:04+02:00 Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin Jung, Patrick Baumann, Karen Lehnert, Lukas W. Samolov, Elena Achilles, Sebastian Schermer, Michael Wraase, Luise M. Eckhardt, Kai-Uwe Bader, Maaike Y. Leinweber, Peter Karsten, Ulf Bendix, Jörg Büdel, Burkhard 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12368 http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/9503 eng eng doi:10.1111/gbi.12368 http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/9503 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY ddc:581.7 doc-type:article 2019 ftsubggeo https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12368 2022-11-09T06:51:40Z The Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert on Earth, presenting precarious conditions for biological activity. In the arid coastal belt, life is restricted to areas with fog events that cause almost daily wet–dry cycles. In such an area, we discovered a hitherto unknown and unique ground covering biocenosis dominated by lichens, fungi, and algae attached to grit-sized (~6 mm) quartz and granitoid stones. Comparable biocenosis forming a kind of a layer on top of soil and rock surfaces in general is summarized as cryptogamic ground covers (CGC) in literature. In contrast to known CGC from arid environments to which frequent cyclic wetting events are lethal, in the Atacama Desert every fog event is answered by photosynthetic activity of the soil community and thus considered as the desert's breath. Photosynthesis of the new CGC type is activated by the lowest amount of water known for such a community worldwide thus enabling the unique biocenosis to fulfill a variety of ecosystem services. In a considerable portion of the coastal Atacama Desert, it protects the soil from sporadically occurring splash erosion and contributes to the accumulation of soil carbon and nitrogen as well as soil formation through bio-weathering. The structure and function of the new CGC type are discussed, and we suggest the name grit–crust. We conclude that this type of CGC can be expected in all non-polar fog deserts of the world and may resemble the cryptogam communities that shaped ancient Earth. It may thus represent a relevant player in current and ancient biogeochemical cycling. Article in Journal/Newspaper polar desert GEO-LEOe-docs (FID GEO) Geobiology 18 1 113 124 |
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GEO-LEOe-docs (FID GEO) |
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ftsubggeo |
language |
English |
topic |
ddc:581.7 |
spellingShingle |
ddc:581.7 Jung, Patrick Baumann, Karen Lehnert, Lukas W. Samolov, Elena Achilles, Sebastian Schermer, Michael Wraase, Luise M. Eckhardt, Kai-Uwe Bader, Maaike Y. Leinweber, Peter Karsten, Ulf Bendix, Jörg Büdel, Burkhard Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin |
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ddc:581.7 |
description |
The Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert on Earth, presenting precarious conditions for biological activity. In the arid coastal belt, life is restricted to areas with fog events that cause almost daily wet–dry cycles. In such an area, we discovered a hitherto unknown and unique ground covering biocenosis dominated by lichens, fungi, and algae attached to grit-sized (~6 mm) quartz and granitoid stones. Comparable biocenosis forming a kind of a layer on top of soil and rock surfaces in general is summarized as cryptogamic ground covers (CGC) in literature. In contrast to known CGC from arid environments to which frequent cyclic wetting events are lethal, in the Atacama Desert every fog event is answered by photosynthetic activity of the soil community and thus considered as the desert's breath. Photosynthesis of the new CGC type is activated by the lowest amount of water known for such a community worldwide thus enabling the unique biocenosis to fulfill a variety of ecosystem services. In a considerable portion of the coastal Atacama Desert, it protects the soil from sporadically occurring splash erosion and contributes to the accumulation of soil carbon and nitrogen as well as soil formation through bio-weathering. The structure and function of the new CGC type are discussed, and we suggest the name grit–crust. We conclude that this type of CGC can be expected in all non-polar fog deserts of the world and may resemble the cryptogam communities that shaped ancient Earth. It may thus represent a relevant player in current and ancient biogeochemical cycling. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Jung, Patrick Baumann, Karen Lehnert, Lukas W. Samolov, Elena Achilles, Sebastian Schermer, Michael Wraase, Luise M. Eckhardt, Kai-Uwe Bader, Maaike Y. Leinweber, Peter Karsten, Ulf Bendix, Jörg Büdel, Burkhard |
author_facet |
Jung, Patrick Baumann, Karen Lehnert, Lukas W. Samolov, Elena Achilles, Sebastian Schermer, Michael Wraase, Luise M. Eckhardt, Kai-Uwe Bader, Maaike Y. Leinweber, Peter Karsten, Ulf Bendix, Jörg Büdel, Burkhard |
author_sort |
Jung, Patrick |
title |
Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin |
title_short |
Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin |
title_full |
Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin |
title_fullStr |
Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin |
title_full_unstemmed |
Desert breath—How fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal Atacama Desert’s living skin |
title_sort |
desert breath—how fog promotes a novel type of soil biocenosis, forming the coastal atacama desert’s living skin |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12368 http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/9503 |
genre |
polar desert |
genre_facet |
polar desert |
op_relation |
doi:10.1111/gbi.12368 http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/9503 |
op_rights |
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12368 |
container_title |
Geobiology |
container_volume |
18 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
113 |
op_container_end_page |
124 |
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1766171750631997440 |