STEM-In-Action Fall Follow Up: Myco-Risers

We're halfway through our STEM-In-Action Fall Follow Up series! If you're new to the series, the U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) awards STEM-In-Action Grants of up to $5,000 to eCYBERMISSION National Finalist or Regional Winning teams that wish to further develop and implement their projects in their communities. Today, we're catching up with team Myco-Risers!
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Fall is a good season to start considering/reconsidering plans for the garden. We (Aditya, Graham, and Yuvaan) worked on a eCYBERMISSION project last year to better understand the impact of lawns and certain types of ‘weeds’ on soil biome health. We call ourselves the Micro-Risers. Aditya, one of our team members, loves science, badminton and Fall (video game). Yuvaan is an avid chess and basketball player, as well as loves to take up challenging 3D-Printing projects outside school. Graham loves soccer and loves to spend his spare time playing board games like Monopoly. We are all from Fairfax, Virginia and we all live about five minutes away from each other making in-person meetings easy for us. Yuvaan had heard about eCYBERMISSION from his older sister and was really interested in trying it out. He reached out to his friends that shared his passion for science and nature. Both Graham and Aditya came on board.

Our research revolved around understanding the soil biome and the factors that affect it. From our research we understood that there are many microscopic organisms such as protozoa, bacteria, fungi, and unique types of nematodes to name a few, that reside in the soil and make up the soil biome. When isolated from human-created factors, these organisms are able to keep the soil biome balanced for the benefit of all plants and animals. We discovered through our project that manicured lawns are bad for the soil and the organisms that live in it. We use chemicals such as fertilizers, herbicides, etc., to keep the grass uniform and cut the grass short for the manicured lawn look. We kill plants such as clover and dandelions as they are considered as ‘weeds’ in our lawns. In fact, these plants are not weeds, they are very useful to our soil, other plants and animals.

Since grass has short roots, it can’t get nutrients and water from the underground. This means we waste a lot of water to irrigate the grass, and apply fertilizers for healthy-looking lawns. Then, we cut this grass with lawn mowers that use fossil fuels and emit carbon dioxide. But cutting the grass, we are releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since the grass blades that are attached to the plant are actually trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Through our research we are convinced that there is an immediate problem in society. We need to increase awareness in our communities to ensure we are changing our practices.

Our solution to the lawn-grass problem is growing native plants such as clover on our properties. Clover lawns not only address our issue of reviving the natural balance to the soil biome, they also help with water conservation, carbon sequestration and other benefits. Our research showed that Clover has long roots: This allows the plant to get more nutrients from the soil so it does not need any fertilizer. In fact, it actually pulls many necessary nutrients deep below the soil and brings it to the surface, from where other plants are able to use these nutrients to grow and thrive. There is a lot of research that has been done in the past about how water run-off carrying all the excess fertilizers is polluting our water-bodies. Clover lawns address this issue fully. In addition, the reduces lawn maintenance costs for the home-owners that will NOT have to (1) Water the lawn, (2) Fertilize the lawn or even (3) Mow the lawn since some types of clover plants stay really low and don’t grow very tall. They thrive even in drought conditions making them ideal for places like Texas and California where people experience water-shortage in summer time. When grass is mowed, all the carbon dioxide that it absorbs gets released back into the air increasing greenhouse effects. Since clover lawns don’t have to be mowed they continue to absorb carbon dioxide, reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and they look pleasing to the eye too. We also save on fossil fuels by not using lawn mowers. We were amazed at all the benefits of incorporating clover lawns!

We want to use our grant money to buy a special type of microscope that will allow us to study the organisms (protozoa, bacteria, fungi, and unique types of nematodes) that are in the soil and help restore soil balance. We want to understand their sustenance in clover lawns versus grass lawns and we would like to see if there is a way to determine/predict soil condition deterioration using biological study faster and more accurately than with soil chemical analysis. We also intend to use our grant money to spread awareness in our community. We will find five properties where we can change a section of their property from grass lawn to clover. We will use these five test sites to conduct our experiments and determine if we can really realize the benefits of clover lawns, and other native plants as well as study any negative impacts due to clover in these areas. We plan to conduct chemical analysis as well as biological analysis with our newly purchased microscope. Once we have had a chance to complete our experiments, we plan to spread awareness in our immediate communities, and if applicable expand clover lawns to more areas in our neighborhood. Soil health is an immediate issue that requires our attention: Same as water and atmosphere. Our study has proven that cover crops such as clover offer a solution that addresses all three types of pollution. Now, we just have to do it!

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Myco-Risers are putting their scientific research into action in the real world, embodying the true mission of eCYBERMISSION! We're excited to see them transform the grass lawns in their community to clover cover to improve the environmental health of their community.

Faith Benner
AEOP Senior Communications and Marketing Specalist