Eliciting and Modeling Residential Lawn and Landscape Practices: Systematic Information to Assess Knowledge, Explicit Behavior, and Inform Management across the Long Island Sound Watershed

There is significant concern about the environmental impact of residential lawns, especially the extent to which they export nutrients and how this export is related to human behavior such as lawn fertilizer use. Despite past research seeking to characterize residential lawn care, there is no clear understanding of the most effective means to influence lawn care practices across the Long Island Sound watershed. Past research has focused on general attitudes and socio-economic factors associated with residential land management, including behaviors such as fertilizing, irrigating and mowing. However, this literature has been unable to inform plans that are effective at influencing lawn care practices, because it has not produced a satisfactory explanation for the variation in practices that influence nitrogen export and stormwater runoff, or evaluated the extent to which specific programs or policies can influence these practices moving forward. Hence, lawn care and its impacts remain an unresolved challenge emphasized by Long Island Sound strategic planning. This interdisciplinary research project, with collaborators from City University of New York and Florida Atlantic University, will adapt and extend existing integrated models, experimental designs, and survey instruments to model the dynamics of lawn care behaviors across the Long Island Sound watershed.