• 0 Posts
  • 50 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023
  • Madison420@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Don't let your dreams be memes ✨️English
    11·
    6 months ago

    Mowing more frequently was better for the bees: *"Mowing frequency altered the evenness of bees within suburban yards, though the patterns we observed did not fully support our hypothesis, in that lawns mowed every week and every three-weeks had higher evenness (Fig. 4d) and richness (Rarefaction curves; Fig. 2) when compared with the two-week treatment."

    You also ignored the important part where the study pretty explicitly says there are better practices including wilding they just aren’t likely to gain acceptance with tedious home owners.

    A New England study on lawn care attitudes and behaviors found that householders were concerned about water quality and thus were willing to try al- ternative lawn care approaches that were more environmentally friendly (e.g., higher mowing height, reduced fertilizer application). However, the authors also noted significant barriers to changing be- haviors including concerns that the alternative lawn care would not be as aesthetically pleasing, would incur additional financial burdens, and would require more time for upkeep (Eisenhauer et al., 2016).

  • Madison420@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Don't let your dreams be memes ✨️English
    11·
    6 months ago

    It doesn’t but do go on.

    We suggest a ‘lazy lawnmower’ approach as an additional option for managing yards for wildlife. The recommendation to mow lawns less frequently to help promote bee conservation might garner broad public support (potentially compared with lawn reduction or replacement) because it more closely aligns with current single-family homeowner motivations for adopting lawn-dominated yardscapes. A New England study on lawn care attitudes and behaviors found that householders were concerned about water quality and thus were willing to try al- ternative lawn care approaches that were more environmentally friendly (e.g., higher mowing height, reduced fertilizer application). However, the authors also noted significant barriers to changing be- haviors including concerns that the alternative lawn care would not be as aesthetically pleasing, would incur additional financial burdens, and would require more time for upkeep (Eisenhauer et al., 2016). Likewise, in a multi-city survey, respondents ranked various landscaping deci- sions in which aesthetically pleasing, weed-free, and ease of main- tenance topped the list, while provisioning for wildlife ranked fifth out of eight choices (Larson et al., 2015). These studies suggest that wild- life-friendly landscaping has some support, but the acceptance of weeds and the inclusion of more native plants (which are not as showy as their non-native congeners; Frankie et al., 2005) might be at odds with more preferred management goals of aesthetics and ease of maintenance (Lerman et al., 2012b; van Heezik et al., 2012). Based on our interac- tions with participating households and their neighbors, our treatment of a three-week mowing frequency appeared unkempt and exceeded the tolerance of many homeowners and their neighbors, and thus the two- week regime might reconcile homeowner ideals with pollinator habitat. Moving towards a mechanistic approach when studying urban biodiversity (Shochat et al., 2006) increases our ability to directly link management with ecological outcomes, and ultimately lead to effective action. Our experimental approach demonstrated how altering lawn management decisions influences bee abundance despite the inherent variability present in suburban yards. Manipulating lawn mowing be- haviors also demonstrates a new and creative approach for supporting urban biodiversity by rethinking the role lawns play towards enriching urban areas. Mowing less frequently is practical, economical, environ- mental and a timesaving alternative to lawn replacement or even planting pollinator gardens, that has the potential to be widely adopted if it can overcome barriers to social acceptance. Most importantly, our research shows that individual households can contribute to urban conservation.