The spatial distribution patterns of biological soil crusts in the Gurbantunggut Desert, Northern Xinjiang, China

The Gurbantunggut Desert, the largest fixed and semi-fixed desert in China, is characterized by a predominant coverage of lichen-dominated biological soil crusts, which serve an indispensable role in sand fixation. Two findings of biological soil crusts have been disclosed from previous field observations: first, distribution of biological soil crusts is selective upon locations; second, species composition varies significantly for the biological soil crusts that are at different developing stages. In this study, a strategy was developed to investigate the spatial distribution of biological soil crusts by coupling remote sensing data and field measurements. A crust index for the Landsat ETM+ data has been developed and applied to detect the lichen-dominated biological soil crusts in the Gurbantunggut Desert. The results indicated the South of the desert encompassed the most abundant biological soil crusts. Besides, biological soil crusts were distributed in uniform density in the South of the desert whereas their distribution patterns become patchier in the rest of the desert. Finally, statistics from the classification revealed that biological soil crusts covered 28.7% of the land in the whole study area. However, it is worth mentioning that the crusts coverage may be underestimated given the fact that detection of crusts from the Landsat ETM+ imagery is viable only if crusts constitute more than 33% of the instantaneous field of view (IFOV) of the Landsat ETM+ sensor.