ASU Polytech research team ‘Red Dirt Girls’ awarded Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund grant

By Connor Van Ligten
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A team of students from the Arizona State University Polytech campus in Mesa were recently awarded a grant thanks to their research on desert soils.

Affectionately known as “Red Dirt Girls,” the team studied dirt soils on campus from February to May and how their findings could be applied to the desert environment at large.

They were one of the many recipients of a grant from the Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund, which gave out almost $100,000 in grant money to various youth-oriented climate groups in Mesa.

Red Dirt Girls’ work had them studying the landscape of the ASU Poly campus, looking at desert landscapes and grassy landscapes, and quantifying the difference in carbon dioxide emissions in those terrains.

What the team found is that desert landscapes and the plants and soils that live on them might be a crucial key to limiting CO2 production that contributes to global warming.

“It’s fairly known that desert landscapes in particular are incredibly efficient at storing and retaining large amounts of CO2, because the native plants on desert landscapes produce roots that go really deep into the soil to collect water, and they produce these root offshoots that become organic matter storers,” ASU student and team member Emma Stancliff said. “They store carbon, and since it’s so dry, it stays in there for an incredibly long period of time. The implications of that are that desert landscapes might be a really incredible way to mitigate atmospheric carbon that is contributing to the warming of the earth.”

Stancliff is studying natural resources and ecology at ASU. She said the program was suggested to ecology students by ASU professor Cynthia Sagers from ASU’s School of Applied Sciences and Arts four years ago.

However, Sagers said the project was originally envisioned as something very different. She said it was originally going to be about beautifying the ASU Poly campus with more plants, but it evolved pretty quickly into what it is now.

“It evolved really quickly into a science project asking what exactly does growing grass or a grassy lawn in the desert do to the growing ecosystem,” Sagers said. “We began asking how do grassy lawns differs from more dry and arid landscapes.”

Sagers said it all lies in the soil and its properties.

“We know that soil is a really big driver of really important ecosystem processes like soil respiration, denitrification, these processes that send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” Sagers said. “The students went from how to plant gorgeous plants on campus to how our campus works as an ecosystem.”

Previous iterations of the study did come with problems. According to Stancliff, in previous years, the Red Dirt Girls had trouble properly comparing grassy lawns, filled with dense organic matter, to desert landscapes, which were much more barren as far as organic matter goes.

That made measuring soil respiration difficult. Although the team could use soil respiration monitors to measure respiration efficiently, those monitors were too expensive for the team’s budget, so they had to get creative.

“We had to figure out how to adjust to that variable. It was very simple but very effective. We used these Tupperware containers to contain gas inside with a digital CO2 monitor,” Stancliff said. “In each of the tubs we had the measure of soil which we would then saturate with water and measure the CO2 that emerged as a result of that process.”

Sagers estimated the team saved around $28,000 on the project using this cost-efficient research method.

The team’s work earned them the aforementioned grant from the Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund. The fund awards grants, typically in the amount between $1,000-$5,000, based on an application process that requires a clear goal for one’s project as well as metrics and focus areas such as materials management, water stewardship and more that submitted projects are scored off of.

Kathrine Blomquist, program manager at the Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund, said the Red Dirt Girls knocked it out of the park during the application process.

“They were very clear with their primary climate focus area, being air quality, and with what their goals were and included supporting materials such as pictures of the team and their work,” Blomquist said. “That supported where they wanted to go further. Their budget was good, and they listed amounts. They answered all these questions, and when I turned it over to the scoring committee, they scored very well.”

Blomquist said the fund’s ultimate objective is to energize and encourage the youth of Mesa to find solutions for climate problems that affect our everyday lives.

“The common goal is to find solutions for these climate challenges that we have right now,” Blomquist said. “I need to give credit where it’s due and thank Bloomberg Philanthropies, who gave us $100,000 in grant money to give out this year.”

Stancliff said the grant will help grow the size and scale of the project for future research, as they can purchase more lab equipment for further detail in soil analysis.

With what her group accomplished with their limited resources, she’s excited about what they can do with the added grant money, and is thinking about expanding the project beyond just the ASU Poly campus.

“Getting the city involved on a larger scale means that we are able to sample across a greater amount of land besides the ASU Poly campus. The campus was nice but it’ll be great to be able to expand,” Stancliff said. “The tools required to do that will be costly, and it will require more manpower, time and energy from our team.”

For information on the Mesa Youth Climate Action Fund, visit https://www.mesaaz.gov/Environment-Sustainability/Living-Green/Mesa-Youth-Climate-Action-Fund.