India, Oct. 4 -- There was a windy beach somewhere in Oregon where the sand never stopped moving. Dunes shift, and farms and houses get buried. So around 1910, Oregon tried a fix. It planted a tough European grass to hold the sand down. It worked, but it changed the coast in ways people hadn't expected. According to a 2012 study in the journal Ecology by Zarnetske and colleagues, the Pacific Northwest coast went from open, shifting dunes to dense, grassy ridges after two non-native beachgrasses took hold.

Sand in motion is more than a nuisance, and Oregon wanted to stop it. One way of solving the issue was by using European beachgrass. This plant has a deep root system and thrives where sand is constantly being deposited. Eventually, a d...