By: Carl Schimenti, Urban Environmental Scientist
Turfgrass has shaped our landscape — and finally, our research too.
I recently came across this Penn State News article that discussed the surprising role of turfgrass in urban greenhouse gas emission fluxes. Greenhouse gas modelers were surprised at the unique carbon dynamics of turfgrass and concluded they should account for turfgrass specifically, rather than lumping it into pre-existing vegetation types like grasslands, forest, or wetland.
Here is a quote from that article: “something like 20% to 30% of the surface area in Indianapolis is estimated to be turfgrass”. These scientists, like many other non-turfgrass researchers in recent years, are beginning to recognize the extent to which turfgrass exists and its potential effect on everything from greenhouse gas emissions, to water quality, to biodiversity.
To hammer home the concept, I wanted to state some existing data on the extent of turfgrass in the UnitedStates. The most cited statistic comes from Milesi et al., 2005, which estimated “potentially 163,800 km2” of land area cultivated with turfgrass in the contiguous 48 states. That’s only slightly smaller than the state of Wisconsin and represents 2.0% of the land area of the United States.
Now, what about the Northeast? It turns out we have MORE grass, fractionally speaking, than the United States as a whole. A 2019 New Jersey Turfgrass Economic Impact Report estimated turfgrass covered 953,500 acres, or 20% of New Jersey’s land area! A 2003 New York State Turfgrass Survey estimated turfgrass coverage at 3,430,000 acres, or 11.4% of New York’s land area. Now THAT is a lot of grass!
Turfgrass has historically received little interest from academics relative to its land coverage, but I’m hopeful that more will begin to experience, like these Penn State researchers did, that it’s a valuable system of study. One example right here in New York is Dr. Amber (Amy) Churchill of SUNY Binghamton. I got a chance to visit her PLEDGE experiment recently, and it was such a joy to see a high-level researcher and teacher investigating ecosystem function principles in lawn systems. I’d encourage you all to sign-up for her PLEDGE newsletter on the website where you can get updates on her findings.
Folks like Dr. Churchill are refreshing to be around, and it makes me hopeful that different people and perspectives will yield new findings that advance our understanding of the role of turfgrass in our society. Maybe, watching grass grow isn’t so boring after all.