More than 1,000 volunteers buried cotton underwear at sites across Switzerland, then dug them up eight weeks later to create the first nationwide Underpants Index of soil biological health.
Published by researchers at the University of Zurich and Agroscope, the citizen science project found dramatic differences in decomposition rates depending on land use. Garden soils showed the fastest decomposition, indicating the highest biological activity, while lawns had the least.
The project also buried 12,000 teabags alongside 2,000 underpants, using two tea types to measure different aspects of soil microbial activity. The average underwear decomposition rate across Switzerland was 24.57 percent, but it varied dramatically by location.
The results demonstrate that how humans manage land has a profound impact on the invisible life within soil, and could inform agricultural policy by providing a simple, scalable method for monitoring soil health across large areas.
