Prairie, grass

The role of plants has emerged from studies with soil slurries at a site with a cover of Paspalum notatum, Lespedeza cuneata, Solidago sp., and Pinus taeda in which increased degradation of trichloroethene to CO2 took place (Walton and Anderson 1990). In addition, prairie grasses can stimulate the effective remediation of PAH-contaminated soil (Aprill and Sims 1990). 

Aprill W, RC Sims (1990) Evaluation of the use of prairie grasses for stimulating polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon treatment in soil. Chemosphere 20 253-265. 

Grasses. Some grass fibrous root systems can extend 2.4 to 3 m (8 to 10 ft) deep. The roots of major prairie grasses can extend to about 1.8 to 3 m (6 to 10 ft). 

The rate of dispersion and the values of the dispersion coefficients depend also on terrain and atmospheric conditions. There are prairie grass coefficients and values for forests (Eares etal., 1980). Both are discussed by Elkinton etal. (1984). (In one more complicated equation, the Gaussian model also considers absorption on the ground surface by introducing a factor a.)... 

Ross, C. W. and Detling, J. K. (1983). Investigations of trypsin inhibitors in leaves of four North American prairie grasses. Journal of ChemicalEcohgy 9,247-257. 

Elsewhere, wood chips, sugarcane, switchgrass (also called Miscanthus), corn husks, prairie grass, or soybean and corn are being converted into liquid biofuels. Various waste materials are also used to make ethanol, butanol, biodiesel, and other substitutes for gasoline. 

Bob looks out the window. The land around the road resembles an Oriental carpet—lavender, crimson, and orange wildflowers mingled with silvery green prairie grass. Nearby, a crystal stream rushes over a white bed of pebbles. It is hard to tell if the stream is natural or artificial. 

Belden JB, Phillips TA, Coats JR. Effect of prairie grass on the dissipation, movement and bioavailability of selected herbicides in prepared soil columns. Environ Toxicol Chem 2004 23(1) 125-32. 

Barad, M.L.. 1958. Project Prairie Grass a field program in diffusion. Geophys. Res. Paper 59. vols. 1—III. AFCRF-TR-58-235, Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Bedford, MA. 

Hanna, S.R., Hansen, O.R., and Dharmavaram, S., 2004. FLAGS CFD air quality model performance evaluation with Kit Fox, MUST, Prairie Grass, and EMU observations, Atmos. Environ., 38, pp. 4675-4687. 

Much current research focuses on the formation of bioethanol from cellulosic plants, plants that contain the complex carbohydrate cellulose. Cellulose is not readily metabolized and so does not compete with the food supply. However, the chemistry for converting cellulose to ethanol is much more complex than that for converting corn. Cellulosic bioethanol could be produced from very fast-growing nonfood plants, such as prairie grasses and switchgrass, which readily renew themselves without the use of fertilizers. 

Fig. 3.2 Predicted concentration isopleths of airborne material utilizing the Gaussian plume model and the Pasquill Prairie Grass dispersion coefficients versus the occurrence of male gypsy moth wing-fanning behavior over a 10-minute interval following pheromone release from a point source. The 1 x 10" isopleth approximates the minimum concentration that produces a similar wing-fanning response in the wind tunnel.

In a series of studies, we have investigated the potential use of individual prairie grasses, a prairie grass mixture, and mulberry trees for the phytoremediation of these pesticides. Our initial erq>eriments have been conducted to demonstrate that plants can survive in soil moderately... 

Initial measurements taken over the first 200 days of this study indicated a trend of increased atrazine and metolachlor dissipation in the prairie grass plots. 

Figure 1. Vegetation with prairie grasses significantly decreased the percentage of pendimethalin and trifluralin remaining in soil after 1,000 days of remediation (F = 12.6, p = 0.004).

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