A perfectly good pair of cotton underwear usually belongs in a dresser drawer, not six inches beneath a garden. But across Switzerland, thousands of briefs were deliberately placed underground in the name of science.
It may sound like a prank, but the unusual experiment offered researchers a revealing look at the hidden communities beneath our feet. Soil supports the crops we eat, stores water and carbon, and is estimated to contain more than half of the planet’s biodiversity. Yet much of this underground world remains easy to overlook.
Through the citizen science project Proof by Underpants, published in Plants, People, Planet, researchers turned an everyday garment into a simple test of soil activity and discovered that what happens to buried underwear depends largely on how the land above it is managed.
“Our results show that how soil is managed can significantly affect both soil life and soil quality. Healthy, biologically active soil is crucial for fertility, nutrient cycling and many other ecosystem services,” said co-study leader Marcel van der Heijden in a press release.
Buried Underwear Reveals Where Soil Life Thrives
Two buried underwear samples show different stages of decomposition.
(Image Credit: Priska Koller, Agroscope)
Following the same instructions, Proof by Underpants participants buried more than 2,000 pairs of cotton underwear at approximately 1,000 locations across Switzerland.
Two months later, the volunteers unearthed the underwear, photographed it, and sent it to a lab with a soil sample. Because cotton is primarily made from cellulose, soil-dwelling organisms can gradually consume the material. The more fabric that disappeared, the more biologically active the soil was likely to be.
Explore All OptionsThe results showed significant differences among locations. Underwear decomposed fastest in private gardens, which also contained the most organic matter. Agricultural fields and meadows occupied the middle of the rankings, while lawns showed the lowest biological activity.
Land use explained the variation in decomposition better than most of the soil properties researchers measured. Nutrient levels, soil temperature, and moisture also affected how quickly the cotton disappeared.
Read More: These Microbes Could Turn Plastic and Plant Waste into Ingredients for Protein-Rich Cookies
Why Healthy Soil Matters for Food and Ecosystems
A lively soil community includes earthworms, fungi, bacteria, and countless other organisms that break down organic material and return nutrients to the ecosystem.
Farmers and gardeners can support these communities by keeping soil covered, applying compost, planting more diverse crop rotations, and limiting mineral fertilizers and pesticides.
The research team clarified that underwear that nearly vanishes is not automatically evidence of a perfectly balanced ecosystem. Rapid decomposition can signal high fertility, but it may also reveal excessive nutrient levels.
“Maximum decomposition is not desirable in every ecosystem. In near-natural habitats such as forests, very high nutrient levels can indicate disruptions to the natural balance of nutrients. In gardens, too, rapid decomposition of the underwear may point to an oversupply of nutrients,” explained co-project leader Franz Bender.
Citizen Science Helps Map an Overlooked World
The project demonstrates how citizen science can extend research far beyond the lab. Without volunteers, collecting standardized information from 1,000 sites across an entire country would have been difficult and expensive for researchers.
The study also lists around 240 citizen scientists as co-authors of the study. And all participants received individualized soil-test results, evaluation tools, and advice for managing their land more sustainably.
Most importantly, the experiment gave people a memorable way to see soil as a living ecosystem. A buried pair of underwear cannot provide a complete diagnosis of soil health, but the holes left behind can make an otherwise invisible world easier to understand.
Read More: Plastic-Eating Microbes Could Help Tackle Our Environmental Mess
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from Plants, People, Planet: Soil health assessment using buried cotton underpants with the help of 1000 citizen scientists
