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Grass Purifies Water
One of the major causes of our growing water quality problem is runoff of contaminants from hard surfaces, such as
roads and parking lots. Unfortunately, with expansion and building development open space is lost to these impervious
surfaces.
Runoff can be reduced by establishing new lawns and turfgrass areas. The biology of turfgrass makes
lawns a near ideal medium for the biodegradation of all sorts of environmental contamination. Turfgrass purifies the
water as it leaches through the root zone and down into our underground aquifers. Soil microbes help break down chemicals
into harmless materials. This filtration system is so effective rain water filtered through a good healthy lawn is often
as much as 10 times less acidic than water running off a hard surface.
These filtration properties are also the
reason that turfgrass is used to help recycle effluent water. Reclaimed water cannot be returned to most municipal water
supplies or released into streams, lakes or oceans. But it can be irrigated onto turfgrass where it's cleaned as
it asses down through the root zone. Ten percent of U.S. golf courses are already using effluent water for their turfgrass
irrigation.
Other studies referenced by Dr. James Beard and Dr. Robert Green ("The Role of Turfgrass in Environmental
Protection and Their Benefits to Humans") have shown a similar ability of a turfgrass cover to reduce runoff, and
therefore enhance soil water infiltration and groundwater recharge (Bennet, 1939; Gross et al., 1991; Jean and Juang, 1979;
orton et al., 1988; Watschke and Mumma 1989). Finally, the reduced runoff volume from turfgrass covered areas offers
the potential to decrease the storm-water management requirements and costly structures used in urban development (Schuyler,
1987). Turfgrass ecosystems can support abundant populations of earthworms (Lumbricidae) of from 200 to 300 per square
meter (Potter et al., 1985, 1990a). Earthworm activity increases the amount of macropore space within the soil
that results in higher soil water infiltration rates and water-retention capacity (Lee, 1985).
2007-2011
The Lawn Institute
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