Biological soil crust (biocrust) is a community of diverse organisms on the soil surface that can play an important role in the recovery of degraded ecosystems. In Iceland, biocrusts that develop following revegetation and other restoration interventions stabilize the soil surface and facilitate colonization of many native plant species, including birch and willows. Assisting the development of biocrust thus has great potential for restoration of native woodlands and other key ecosystems. It remains unknown, however, what types of biocrust developed under these conditions, what are effective methods to assist biocrust development, and what features of the biocrusts make them effective at performing desired ecosystem restoration functions.

We propose to: (1) conduct a systematic literature review on the assisted development of biocrust for ecosystem restoration in cold environments (WP1); (2) describe artificially developed biocrusts at three sites in Iceland], by using genetic tools (WPs 2 and 3); (3) build capacity at AUI and partners for assisting and assessing the development of biocrust for ecosystem restoration (WP4, and WP5).