Biological soil crust, field-cultivated mixed communities

Biological soil crusts were field-cultivated on the Colorado Plateau using inoculua from the Colorado Plateau, Mojave, and Sonoran Deserts, or as a mixture of the three. We employed irrigation, growth substrates, and shade cloth throughout the cultivation process. After one year, we used16S marker gene sequencing to characterize the microbial composition of the cultivated biological soil crust samples.