This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A healthy, green lawn can be the envy of any neighborhood, but how does someone cultivate a yard like that? Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science Amber Churchill has been getting her hands dirty and digging into the science behind it.
Through the Pasture and Lawn Enhanced Diversity Global-change Experiment (PLEDGE), Churchill and her team discovered that lavish lawns depend on the environment: The number of species in an ecosystem affects how the system functions. The PLEDGE research initiative is located at Nuthatch Hollow, the outdoor laboratory and wildlife sanctuary gifted to the university by Robert F. Schumann and the Schumann family.
"Lawns are something people actively manage and care about every day," Churchill says. "So, we created 30 experimental plots with different combinations of species, from a typical single-species grass lawn to more diverse mixes that include clover and creeping thyme." This allowed her to directly compare what happens when biodiversity increases in a familiar setting. It's a way of taking a large-scale ecological theory and applying it to something people see right outside their homes.
"Ultimately, we're trying to understand how small changes can lead to meaningful environmental benefits," she explains. People tend to have strong opinions about lawns, whether they love maintaining them or would rather not deal with them at all. To Churchill, that's why they provide such an interesting space to study ecological questions: They sit right at the intersection of human behavior and environmental function.
"In the Northeast, lawns are one of the few ecosystems where we can easily manipulate species composition," she says. "That gives us a unique opportunity to test ideas about biodiversity in a controlled but highly relevant way. It's not just theoretical; it's something that can translate directly to how people manage their own land.
That connection between science and everyday life is what makes this work so exciting." For homeowners asking, "What can I do to make my lawn the pride of the cul-de-sac?" it turns out that simply adding clover significantly increases soil nutrient availability. "That means homeowners could potentially maintain a greener lawn without relying on synthetic fertilizers," she points out. "What's even more important is that we didn't see an increase in nutrient runoff, which is a major environmental concern.
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