Golf courses quite often are considered to be a bad thing for the environment in most of the general publics opinion. Things like we waste large amounts of water, pollute the environment with our fertilizer and chemical, emit greenhouse gases with our diesel mowers, and the destruction of natural habits in building golf courses are all some of the common arguments as to why golf courses are a bad thing. I will be addressing all of these issues and explaining our golf courses relationship with them.
The first thing I would like to tackle is the production of greenhouse gases and our carbon footprint. I calculated it out and on average we would emit around 60 tons of carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) in a season maintaining our golf course with our equipment. That number may not mean much to you right now. But I then figured out that we have roughly 78 acres of maintained turfgrass on our golf course. One acre of turf will store and clean approximately 12.35 tons of carbon. So that means that our entire golf course will clean and store 963 tons of carbon in a season. So our 60 tons of carbon would still leave around 900 tons of carbon to be filtered from outside sources such as cars, boats, houses, etc. in a year that are located off the golf course. The cleaning of this carbon is important because any unfiltered carbon will then break down our atmosphere and destroy the air we breathe. It is said that 55 square feet of turf will filter enough carbon dioxide for one person to breathe per day. With our golf course being 3,410,000 square feet of turf that means that we filter enough carbon dioxide for 62,000 people to breathe in a day.
Water use is a major issue among golf courses and I understand why it is. As golf course superintendents we do need to be more mindful of our water consumption. In Canada we do not face a lot of the challenges with water availability like most other countries but things are beginning to change. We are beginning to use it only as needed instead of just using it because we had it in the past. Our golf course in Mainprize was one of the biggest offenders for this. We pretty much have a never ending source of water in our lake and a huge capacity to apply water compared to most golf courses in the fact that our pumphouse is a very large facility. So as a result the entire course was basically being watered nightly. This obviously would have resulted in a huge amount of water being used and it also lead to the downfall of our course. The previous mindset of overwatering resulted in shallow (one inch) roots and quite unhealthy playing conditions. Mainprize is a hard environment to grow grass in. We are very hot, very windy and almost 100% exposed. So out of fear our course was watered too often to avoid it from drying out. Now we try to water the plant only as it needs. With less frequent watering the water will settle six inches to a foot deep in the growing medium. With the water this deep it forces the roots of the plant to search and grow to find water. This results in much deeper roots, which in turn means a healthier plant that can defend itself against stress if it is up against any. We will continue to reduce the amount of water that we apply in the future to allow for a healthy plant and less water being used.
Irrigation system in operation
Fertilizer and chemical use is probably the number one issue environmentally that Canadian superintendents are facing right now. Fertilizer should not be a huge concern as long as we as superintendents are doing our jobs properly and using the knowledge we acquired through our post secondary education or related training. I calculate through the use of a spreadsheet exactly what my nutrient requirements are so that the plant is getting exactly as much as it needs. If there is not an excess of fertility provided then the risk of fertilizer leaching out of the soil and away from the intended target is much less as the plant will be taking up most of what has been provided for it.
Fungicide and pesticide use is now mostly being done as a curative
measure instead of a preventative. This means that we are applying it only when it is needed to fight off invasion, not just because we think we should so nothing will happen. Also the creation of non-synthetic (natural) products is becoming more and more common. This allows us to be applying product that will not have near the effect on the ecosystem overall. With that being said though, as long as these synthetic (laboratory manufactured) products are being applied properly according to their instructions the risk of problem is not very high. Little do most people know that at equal amounts, your morning caffeine would prove to be lethal sooner than most chemical products that are being applied on golf courses. The main thing that we are realizing is the more healthy of a plant we can grow, the less chemical control we will need because our turf can fight off these stresses much more effectively. So this really means monitoring things like our irrigation, fertilizer, and cultural practices (aerating, verticutting, topdressing, etc).
Greens aeration and topdressing
The final thing that I want to touch on is the simple and progressive things that we can and are doing that can also have a huge impact on our environment. The naturalization of playing areas is a very easy and effective way to help. This is returning areas that are not high traffic areas back to the way they used to be. At our golf course in Mainprize that is very easy since we are a links style golf course. This means allowing the out of play roughs to grow back up into their natural prairie grasses. This allows us to bring the area back to the habitat it was before it was a golf course. We currently do see tons of species such as jackrabbits, deer, moose, many bird types, and many different types of insects out on our course because we are providing the perfect habitat for them to live and survive. It also results in less fuel, fertilizer and chemical which is great both environmentally and financially for our club. Another simple thing is embracing the new technologies that are being produced for us. Things like the new types and cultivars of turfgrasses that are being created can be a great improvement. A lot of them require much less water and fertilizer inputs than a lot of our traditional types. As mentioned before the use of natural pest control products as they continue to evolve and become more effective is a great way to reduce our impact. Irrigation management technology is always evolving so I will not really get into this too much. But things like soil moisture monitors, central control software and weather monitors are all effective ways to reduce our watering practices.
Prairie grass rough provides excellent wilfdlife habitat
In closing I hope this helps in proving that our golf courses are not the big bad things that we are made out to be. We definitely do have some improvements to make, but we are aware of a lot of these things are working to solve them. We are currently practicing a lot of different methods that are not hurting our environment, but actually improving it and making it better for everyone and everything.
