Turfgrass revolution: measuring the expansion of the American lawn

This paper investigates one of the most understudied components of urban sprawl, the expansion of lawn monocultures and their concomitant high-input chemical management regimes. Introducing a method for estimating lawn coverage and growth, the paper models and explains the expansion of lawns using the case of Franklin County, OH. The results suggest that lawns occupy a significant proportion of total land cover (similar to23%) and that lawns continue to grow as a relative proportion of lot size. The implications of this coverage are discussed in terms of both net changes in toxic chemical inputs and the policy implications of suburban ecology. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.