The Dual Use Of Solar Power Plants As Biocrust Nurseries For Large-Scale Arid Soil Restoration

Large portions of global arid lands are under severe anthropogenic stress, their soils already degraded or in the process of degradation. The interventional regeneration of these soils natural biological cover, photosynthetic communities known as biocrusts that armor them against erosion and fertilize them, is currently regarded as promising for dryland restoration and sustainability. Technologies for biocrust restoration developed during the last decades are, however, invariably of high effort and low capacity, constraining application to small spatial scales. We tested the notion that crustivoltaics, where solar power plants are used as ad hoc biocrusts nurseries, can break this scaling barrier. We show experimentally that solar plants indeed promote the formation of biocrust over neighboring soils, and that biocrust recovery in them is swift, particularly so if re-inoculated. Our results point to a mode of continuous dual operation that is not only effective and socioeconomically attractive but can increase capacity by orders of magnitude to reach regional scales.