Matthew Boker, assistant professor in the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University, will be the featured speaker at the final School of Life Sciences seminar for the fall semester. His talk is titled, "Restoring the living skin of the Earth: Progress and hurdles in biocrust rehabilitation and 'pre-storation.'" 

Dryland soil surfaces potentially house mantles of fertility in a “living skin” on the soil — biocrusts composed of cyanobacteria, mosses, and/or lichens and other organisms. Overlooked and undervalued, biocrusts capture resources pulses, and protect against erosion. They are compromised or missing in most drylands due to disturbance. Without human intervention, they may remain so. Boker and his research team are developing techniques to actively restore biocrusts as an efficient means to rehabilitate drylands’ ability to maintain ecosystem function. A marriage of this technology and a willingness to assist migration of biocrust genetic stock may enable maintenance of dryland function under novel climates.