Experiment: Create a Cryptobiotic Soil Crust Model

Materials:

• 1 gallon bucket of sand
• 1 pound of sphagnum moss
• 1 cup light corn syrup (dark can be used)
• 3 packets unflavored gelatin
• 1 gallon of water
• Cookie sheet
• Blow dryer

Procedure:

As cryptobiotic soil crusts are a combination of sand plus “green algae, lichens, mosses, microfungi and other bacteria,”(1) we’ll need to make a few substitutions.

• If you have an aquarium you can scrape some algae from the sides or the rock. If you don’t have a slimy aquarium you can omit the algae.
• The moss we’ll use is sphagnum moss (or peat moss), which you can purchase in any garden store.
• The cyanobacteria is a bit more difficult, but since it has “mucous tendrils” we’ll substitute fake snot for the cyanobacteria.

Step 1: Fake Snot

Mix up a batch of fake snot using the following Recipe for Fake Snot(2) from Beakman’s World.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup water
• 3 packages of unflavored gelatin
• Light corn syrup (you can use dark syrup – light just looks more “snot-like”)

(1)Belnap, Jayne, Roger Rosentreter, Steve Leonard, Julie Hilty Kaltenecker, John Williams and David Edlridge, Biological Soil Crusts: Ecology and Management, 2001. Technical Reference 1730-2. U.S. Department of the Interior.

(2) Beakman’s World