生物结皮领域的新书：

Biological Soil Crusts: An Organizing Principle in Drylands

Duringthe last decades, and probably at least partly triggered by the firstEcological Studies volume on this topic (volume 150), biological soil crusts(biocrusts) have quickly gained increasing interest from many audiences, withwell above 100 publications per year published during the last few years. Thus,we found that there is now a wealth of new data covering a wide range ofdifferent topics on biocrusts and showing that biocrusts can act as “anorganizing principle in drylands.” This observation inspired us to use this asthe title of this second Ecological Studies volume. This book is divided intoseven sections comprising a total of 25 different chapters.

Whenwe selected the authors for the different chapters, we had two intentions in ourmind. One was to include many scientists from as many regions of the world as possible,who also used different methodological approaches in order to get a thoroughand comprehensive view on the different topics. Second, we also wanted to get agood mixture of younger and well-established researchers. With a total of 61chapter authors and 28 of them being in the doctoral, postdoc, or associate professorstage, ~46 % of the book authors are in a nonfinal/early stage of their career.

Thissecond book on biological soil crusts would not have been possible without thehelp of some people in particular, whom we would like to thank here: first ofall, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Otto L. Lange, who gave usthe opportunity to be editors of this book, who strongly supported usthroughout the whole process of development, from the first ideas to the finaleditions, and who read and gave highly productive feedback to every singlechapter of this book. Thank you so much! Second, we also would like to thankall the authors who contributed to the book. We are well aware of the fact thatwe sometimes asked for rather profound and time-consuming changes during thedevelopment of the book chapters. Despite this, all authors remained highlycooperative and motivated, a fact which cannot be taken for granted and whichwe deeply appreciate. Third, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Dr.Andrea Schlitzberger, who coordinated this biocrust book for Springer. Shealways was extremely patient and helped us immediately upon all smaller andlarger problems, and it really was a pleasure to work with her. Fourth, we wantto thank our supervisors and colleagues, who allowed us to spend so much timeand energy on this book and who believed that in the end, we would produce aworthwhile book that would advance this scientific field. Finally, we alsowould like to express our sincere thanks to our families and partners for theirtolerance and support during the endeavor of this second biocrust book.

Wesincerely hope this book will help many scientists, land managers, policy makers,and also the environmentally interested public, to receive an overall introductioninto the fascinating world of biocrusts and that it will foster many new ideasand scientific projects. Our goal is reached if this book supportsunderstanding of the overall role of biocrusts as an organizing principle indrylands.