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

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 li