Background Food and water shortages are leading to the development of new technologies aimed at sourcing these resources from the air. Atmospheric water harvesting is an emerging field where atmospheric moisture, such as fog and clouds, is collected to obtain liquid water from the atmosphere (in addition to traditional rainwater harvesting). Recent...

Large swaths of arid land are under severe, increasing anthropogenic stress, with degrading or already degraded soils. Regeneration of biocrusts, photosynthetic communities which act as the natural biological cover of arid soils and increase nutrients into them, has promise for dryland restoration and sustainability. However, unaided recovery of biocrust...