A Green Grassy Lawn: Love It Or Leave It?

"On the eastern fringe of the Phoenix suburbs, where strip malls interweave with subdivisions and cotton fields, Arizona State University horticulture professor Chris Martin is thinking about water. During the latter days of the longest dry spell in city history, under a desert sky that's dull with dust, Martin is studying the fraught relationship between yards and the people who plant, cultivate and irrigate them."

Professor Martin and his team of researchers are conducting a large-scale landscape experiment around student family housing on the Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus. Part of the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER), the experiment is designed to allow researchers to study interactions between humans and the landscape, while also observe biogeochemistry and populations dynamics under controlled conditions.