title: Biocrust morphogroups provide an effective and rapid assessment tool for drylands.
abstract: Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) occur across most of the world's drylands and are sensitive indicators of dryland degradation. Accounting for shifts in biocrust composition is important for quantifying integrity of arid and semi-arid ecosystems, but the best methods for assessing biocrusts are uncertain. We investigate the utility of surveying biocrust morphogroups, a reduced set of biotic classes, compared to species data, for detecting shifts in biocrust composition and making inference about dryland degradation.We used multivariate regression tree (MRT) analyses to model morphogroup abundance, species abundance and species occurrence data from two independent studies in semi-arid open woodlands of south-eastern Australia. We advanced the MRT method with a 'best subsets' model selection procedure, which improved model stability and prediction.Biocrust morphogroup composition responded strongly to surrogate variables of ecological degradation. Further, MRT models of morphogroup data had stronger explanatory power and predictive power than MRT models of species abundance or occurrence data. We also identified morphogroup indicators of degraded and less degraded sites in our study region.Synthesis and applications. Sustainable management of drylands requires methods to assess shifts in ecological integrity. We suggest that biocrust morphogroups are highly suitable for assessment of dryland integrity because they allow for non-expert, rapid survey and are informative about ecological function. Furthermore, morphogroups were more robust than biocrust species data, showed a strong response to ecological degradation and were less influenced by environmental variation, and models of morphogroup abundance were more predictive.
authors.affiliation: School of Botany, University of Melbourne Parkville, Vic., 3010, Australia.
authors.forename: Cassia F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Read
authors.affiliation: School of Botany, University of Melbourne Parkville, Vic., 3010, Australia ; Department of Environment and Primary Industries, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research 123 Brown St, Heidelberg, Vic., 3084, Australia.
authors.forename: David H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Duncan
authors.affiliation: School of Botany, University of Melbourne Parkville, Vic., 3010, Australia.
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Vesk
authors.affiliation: School of Botany, University of Melbourne Parkville, Vic., 3010, Australia.
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Elith
authors.affiliation: School of Botany, University of Melbourne Parkville, Vic., 3010, Australia.
authors.forename: Shiqiang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wan
keywords: biological soil crust; bryophyte; cyanobacteria; ecological integrity; functional group; lichen; morphological group; multivariate regression trees; rapid survey; semi-arid