SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
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FieldScience est preservation. More-advanced research includes the development of fast-growing trees and grasses and deciphering the genomes of car- bon-storing soil microbes. Rather than sports turf, NETL's terrestrial sequestration R&D is focused on reforesting and amending mine lands and other damaged soils and analyzing various land management techniques, including no-till farming, reforestation, rangeland improvement, wetlands re- covery, and riparian restoration. There is a heavy agricultural and forestry bent to the NETL program. While ag research is important, it leaves out the contribution of sports turf. Taken together, however, natural areas will help reduce CO2 emissions. This is no easy task. Roughly speaking, NETL figures it would take about 220,000 acres to offset emissions from a single, average- sized coal-fired power plant. That is a lot of soccer fields, golf courses and baseball diamonds. The NETL figure assumes an average coal power plant from the existing fleet and a forest uptake rate of three tons of carbon per acre per year. Terrestrial sequestration is conceptu- alized for use in conjunction with CO2 capture and storage to provide fossil-fired power generation with zero net greenhouse gas emissions. It is expensive to capture the last 5-10% of CO2 emissions from a fos- sil fuel conversion plant, due to the law of diminishing returns. Sports turf and trees are not the final answer. NETL figures a cost- effective approach for zero emissions is to capture 90% of emissions and offset the remaining 10% with terrestrial sequestration. NETL does point out the many collateral benefits of this kind of program, including flood protection, wildlife/endangered species habitat, re- stored ecosystems, and the like. Soil carbon is both organic and inorganic carbon contained in soil. During photosynthesis, plants convert CO2 into organic carbon, which then is deposited in the soil through their roots and as plant residue. Organic carbon is found in the top layer of soil, the A hori- zon. Inorganic soil carbon comprises carbonates that form through non-biological interactions. They are a minor amount compared with organic carbon, but are considered more permanent. Large plant roots, such as those of trees, are considered biomass and not part of the soil, but the organic matter, if you look closely, includes many fine root hairs, where much of the CO2 exchange from the plant to the soil occurs. But Qian sees ways sports managers can help with carbon in ways that go beyond carbon sequestration. “Turf managers should look at carbon sequestration as only one side of the equation,” Qian says. “The other side is carbon emissions.” By this, she means managers have to look at ways to minimize their carbon footprint…whether from chemical use, from vehicle use, or other carbon-generating uses. “Some vehicles are more fuel-efficient,” she says. “It’s another area of the carbon question that needs work.” ■ Chris Harrison is a free lance writer who specializes in turf and agri- culture. 12 SportsTurf | April 2011 www.sportsturfonline.com