Welcome to another episode of Outstanding in the Field, the U.S. Geological Survey’s podcast series produced by the Ecosystems Mission Area. We highlight our fun and fascinating fieldwork studying ecosystems across the country. Today we’ll be discussing tiny communities that are found on the surface of the soil in the harsh environments of cold and hot deserts. These often-overlooked communities are called biological soil crusts, or biocrusts for short, and USGS scientists at the Southwest Biological Science Center have been studying them for quite a while.