Biological Soil Crust (IMAGE)

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Biological Soil Crust

Caption

This looks like ordinary dirt but it is a biological soil crust (BSC), a living mantle of soil particles bound together by microbes and their by-products. BSCs are common to the arid and semiarid lands that make up about 40-percent of Earth's total land mass.

Credit

(Photo from Ferran Garcia-Pichel, Arizona State University)

Usage Restrictions

with permission of Ferran Garcia-Pichel, Arizona State University

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