Have there been any studies done on the effects of turf grass on forest communities?

Question

Have there been any studies done on the effects of turf grass on forest communities? I have been able to find a lot that have to do with groundwater quality, but nothing at all with the potenital impacts on forests.

Answer 1

You would find little or no turf grass in a true forest community unless you were talking about an open type of a forest like you might find in a park. At any rate turf grass does a pretty good job of absorbing fertilizer applied and controlling runoff, unless it is applied in excessive rates. In which case it would cause mostly excess undergrowth in a forest. A forest community does a good job of recycling nutrients within the community and does normally need added fertilizer.

Answer 2

If you have turfgrass on land that drains into a forest, the fertilizer will make the trees grow faster, provided only that there is no herbicide along with the fertilizer.

Answer 3

We have areas where I am that have some light grasses in the secondary growth forests, probably the result of farm land returning to tree covering. It only occurs in areas that are lightly tree covered as grasses need more light than true forest allows to fall to the ground. There shade plants are king. The research you look for would be that done on those shade plants. Any niche in a forest that has nutrients would have a cover of plants. Anything getting past those plants would be used by the huge intertwined tree root system and all the bacteria and fungi. Beyond that it is the naturally occurring minerals of the water, found when the water table follows the contours of insoluble clay or rock to the surface in the form of streams and wetlands. Forests generally have most of the nutrients locked up in the actual plants themselves. When those plants die, the nutrients generally recycle and/ or mineralize and support the biodiversity of that ecology. This is why slash and burn farming does not work. There in is the path to your research. If your question is why we don't grass our forests or design a grass to do that, my question would be "to what purpose"? Grass does not have a place in the forest ecosystem because the niche is already filled.