Researchers from ETH- Zurich and the University of Hawaii spread 30 dump truck loads of coffee pulp on a 35m * 40 m area of degraded land in Costa Rica and captured out a same sized of area which had no coffee pulp as a control area. After observing both the lands, the results were much dramatic and it is said by DR. Rebecca Cole, who is a lead authority of the study. The area which was treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in less than only two years while the control plot remained dominated by nonnative pasture grasses.
The researchers analyzed soil samples for nutrients immediately before the application of the coffee pulp and again two years later. They also recorded the species present, the size of woody stems, percentage of forest ground cover and used drones to record canopy cover. Dr. Cole warns that as a case study with two years of data, further research is needed to test the use of coffee pulp to aid forest restoration. This study was done at one large site only which required larger testing, to see if the strategy works across a broader range of conditions. The measurements are only from the first two years. Longer-term monitoring would show how the coffee pulp affected soil and vegetation over time. Additional testing can also assess whether there are any undesirable effects from the coffee pulp application.
Now it is being seen that the area which is treated by the pulp of coffee shows some kind of changes after only two years the area in which there is coffee pulp area and it had 80% canopy cover compared to 20% in the control area. The pollution factor in forest areas should be controlled accordingly. The canopy in the coffee pulp area was also four times taller than that of the control area. Some updates were done in the coffee canopy area which includes the addition of the half-meter thick layer of the coffee pulp eliminated the invasive pasture grasses which dominated the land area.
