The American residential garden serves as a quintessential factor within the panorama, with roughly half of U.S. owners utilizing fertilizer to keep up inexperienced, lush yards. Nonetheless, this observe has its drawbacks. A certain quantity of nitrogen from fertilizers inevitably leaches into the broader setting, leading to damaging penalties equivalent to algal blooms and deoxygenated waters.
Research on Nitrogen Export from Lawns
Peter Groffman and colleagues studied residential landscapes within the Baltimore, Maryland metropolitan space, which drains to the Chesapeake Bay, searching for to establish areas (hotspots) or occasions (sizzling moments) with disproportionately excessive charges of nitrogen export. The authors went to lawns in exurban, suburban, and school campus settings to measure nitrogen export throughout simulated rainfall occasions created by including recognized quantities of water to precise lawns within the discipline.
Surveys and Findings on Nitrogen Consciousness
The authors additionally used family survey information collected by the Baltimore Ecosystem Research Lengthy Time period Ecological Analysis in 2003, 2011, and 2018—in addition to their very own push-to-web survey of three,836 Baltimore space households. Nitrogen export dynamics of lawns present large variation, though all export hotspots have been discovered on fertilized somewhat than unfertilized lawns.
Some 48% of 2018 survey respondents incorrectly believed that they didn’t reside in a watershed, and greater than 60% of internet survey respondents didn’t know if nitrogen negatively affected space waterways. (It does.) Help for insurance policies limiting fertilizer use was broadly excessive amongst surveyed households, with some kinds of restrictions even garnering help amongst those that fertilize their very own lawns.
Public Curiosity in Garden Conversion
About half of households are taken with changing lawns to options that cut back nitrogen export, equivalent to rain gardens, if such conversions are sponsored and made as straightforward as potential. In keeping with the authors, altering simply 5-10% of suburban lawns to various landscaping may have a serious impact on watershed-wide nitrogen export.
Reference: “Hydro-bio-geo-socio-chemical interactions and the sustainability of residential landscapes” by Peter M Groffman, Amanda Ok Suchy, Dexter H Locke, Robert J Johnston, David A Newburn, Arthur J Gold, Lawrence E Band, Jonathan Duncan, J Morgan Grove, Jenny Kao-Kniffin, Hallee Meltzer, Tom Ndebele, Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, Colin Polsky, Grant L Thompson, Haoluan Wang and Ewa Zawojska, 17 October 2023, PNAS Nexus.
DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad316