In sand-land ecological systems, there are wide-spread biological soil crusts which have an important function in the ecological systems. In this study, the heavy metal element contents in artificial biological and physical crusts of different stages were measured in the vicinity of Dalate Thermal Power Plant in Kubuqi Desert to analyze the influence of physical soil crusts and different types of biological soil crusts in different developmental stages upon the ability to accumulate heavy metal and indication of their pollution. The results showed that the contents of various heavy metals increased each year with the increasing of the developmental time of biological and physical crusts of different stages. For most of types of heavy metals in soil crusts, the contents displayed the following sequence as Zn>Cr>Ni>Pb>Cu>As>Co>Cd >Hg, and for a few of types, the contents showed one as Cr > Zn > Ni > Pb > Cu > As > Co >Cd>Hg. One factor analysis of variance (One-way ANOVA) demonstrated that the difference significance (P<0.05) of the various heavy metal contents in moss crusts of different stages was greatly lower than that in the algal and physical crusts. Comparing of the heavy metal contents in the biological crust and physical crusts of the same stage revealed that moss crusts > algal crusts > physical crusts, suggesting that the heavy metal enrichment of moss crusts was greater than that of algal crusts and physical crusts. Through one-way ANOVA, the contents of Hg and Ni in all kinds of biological crusts and physical crusts of the same stage were no significant difference, while the contents of Cr, Zn, Cu and Co were significantly different (P<0.05) in between moss crusts and algae crusts, or in between algae crusts and physical crusts. As for Pb, As and Cd, their contents did not vary significantly with the development stages of different crusts(P<0.05). The contaminant factor (CF) analysis showed that moss crusts were more sensitive than algal crusts and physical crusts for the role of indicating pollution. Meanwhile, biological crusts accumulated the heavy metals selectively. They less likely accumulated Hg, Ni, Zn, Cu, Pb and Co and more likely enriched Cr, Cd and As.