Overview
- The study, published Thursday, gathered results from about 1,000 sites where volunteers buried standardized kits of organic cotton underpants and tea bags and sent photos and soil samples to labs for analysis.
- Researchers found land use was the main driver of decomposition, with private gardens showing the fastest breakdown, agricultural fields and meadows intermediate, and lawns the slowest.
- The team proposes an “underwear index” that produced results comparable to the established Tea Bag Index and is designed to be an easy visual tool for public outreach and monitoring.
- Authors link faster decomposition to higher soil fertility useful for farming but warn that very rapid breakdown in near‑natural areas or some gardens can signal nutrient oversupply and a need to curb fertilizer use.
- The citizen science effort produced one of Switzerland’s most comprehensive soil‑activity datasets and a public national map that can guide local soil management, farmer practices, and future monitoring efforts.