When engineers look to nature for inspiration, they often turn to living systems. The flight of birds has influenced aircraft design, gecko feet inspired new adhesives and lotus leaves led to the development of self-cleaning surfaces.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania now argue that engineers should look somewhere else in nature as well: the ground beneath their feet.

In a perspective paper published in APS Journals, the team introduces geomimicry, a framework that asks how soils, sediments and other Earth-mediated materials have been shaped over geologic time, and how those processes can inspire the next generation of sustainable materials.

“Soils have been evolving locally in different places under climate, temperature cycles, rain, dryness and all of that,” says Paulo Arratia, Eduardo D. Glandt Distinguished Scholar and Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM). “We want to learn those rules so that we can re-engineer materials.”

This story was originally published on the MEAM blog here.