Home lawns are one of the most common urban land surfaces in the United States and provision many cultural and ecological benefits. Many of these benefits arise from turfgrass soils and their belowground ecosystems. As homeowner interest in managing lawns for diverse ecosystem services grows, it is important to understand how varying management practices affect these goals and how efforts to manage belowground ecology may alter lawn quality and aesthetic. In this study we utilized an experimental lawn system to contrast the effects of management intensity on soil fauna communities, microbial biomass, and decomposition. Further, we simultaneously investigate how the prioritization of these belowground organisms and processes may inadvertently alter lawn quality. Our results show that decreasing management intensity leads to increases in the abundance, richness, and diversity of soil fauna communities, with these changes being most apparent in certain taxa like predatory mites (e.g. Mesostigmata). Despite significant increases in soil fauna, we did not observe downstream changes to soil microbial biomass carbon or nitrogen or decomposition, all aspects of soil ecosystem functioning which are mediated by soil fauna. Further, turf aesthetic assessments revealed substantial decreases in lawn quality in the presence of low-intensity management. Collectively, these results highlight the nuanced ecology of turfgrass systems, and the need to temper societal expectations for turfgrass aesthetics if we are to promote a shift towards valuing ecological integrity in turfgrass appraisals.

中文翻译：

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草坪管理强度导致对地下生态和草坪草美学产生截然不同的影响


家庭草坪是美国最常见的城市陆地表面之一，具有许多文化和生态效益。其中许多好处来自草坪草土壤及其地下生态系统。随着房主对管理草坪以实现各种生态系统服务的兴趣日益浓厚，了解不同的管理实践如何影响这些目标以及管理地下生态的努力如何改变草坪的质量和美学非常重要。在这项研究中，我们利用实验草坪系统来对比管理强度对土壤动物群落、微生物生物量和分解的影响。此外，我们同时调查了这些地下生物和过程的优先排序如何无意中改变草坪质量。我们的结果表明，降低管理强度会导致土壤动物群落的丰度、丰富度和多样性增加，这些变化在某些分类群中最为明显，如掠食性螨虫（例如 Mesostigmata）。尽管土壤动物群显着增加，但我们没有观察到土壤微生物生物量碳或氮或分解的下游变化，土壤生态系统功能的所有方面都是由土壤动物介导的。此外，草坪美学评估显示，在低强度管理的情况下，草坪质量大幅下降。总的来说，这些结果突出了草坪草系统微妙的生态学，以及如果我们要促进在草坪草评估中转向重视生态完整性，就需要降低社会对草坪草美学的期望。