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.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/27931
treated areas compared to areas on the same green not receiving treatment. We were able to see the hidden beneficial effects on turfgrass such as significant im- provement in root growth. We also saw enhanced turf health from Excellerator applications that may go un- noticed by the naked eye,” says Marty Campfield, global product manager. “Having been involved with GPS and GIS for many years, it seems clear that the marriage of these technologies has created an innovative approach to capturing on-the-go reflectance data.” Because sensors can be mounted on a mower or cart, mapping may be integrated into routine operations and Smart Maps available in minutes. The application of this turnkey, and making maps is as easy as downloading photos from your digital camera. Our team has automated the science of making “Smart Maps and Charts.” Smart Maps and Charts of turf quality are available almost immediately from our website. Without being an ex- pert in mapping or remote sensing technology, the turfgrass man- ager or consultant can now use objective measurements of turf quality, and the “big picture” view of Smart Maps, to refine inputs, such as water, nutrients and pesticides, evaluate turfgrass response and recovery, streamline resources and labor, and take action before a problem has taken the turf. Ongoing turf breeding research at the University of Georgia’s Tifton campus has been geared toward the identification of more stress tolerant grasses for the future. “Preliminary results of a 48-day drought study during 2010 indicate that spectral reflectance data col- lected by TurfScout correlate very well with traditional visual ratings of turfgrass quality, as well as with newer methods of estimated % green cover using digital image analysis,” says Brian Schwartz, PhD. Schwartz says the only difference between these techniques to date has been that spectral reflectance data is predicting the visual assess- ments by about 3 days. For Schwartz’s turfgrass breeding program, this means that he can effectively identify drought tolerant geno- types in the field using quantitative data taken by workers without years of training and experience with visual ratings. For the turfgrass manager, it could allow the detection of stressed areas well in ad- vance of visual symptoms, thereby giving them a chance to apply treatments before anyone else ever knew there was a problem. You also can track and manage disease control and nutrient man- agement with Smart Maps. How effective is your program? Did a par- ticular product prevent otherwise inevitable stress? Or did the product speed recovery time? Dave Spak, PhD, with Bayer Environ- mental Science is currently using reflectance data as a component of their Plant Health Initiative. Spak says, “Measuring plant health through radiometry has become a routine evaluation in many of our product programs, particularly our fungicide program. Although we still rely on human element and visual evaluations, this technology takes the subjectivity out of quality evaluations. Also, the technology has the ability to detect plant stresses that may not be visible to the naked eye. Lastly, use of GPS and TurfScout allows us to rapidly process and manage the huge volumes of data which was a major hurdle in the adoption process. As we are still learning how to use this tool, we ex- pect the innovation in the area of remote sensing in plant research will continue to evolve.” In another example, Harsco Minerals, manufacturer of specialty micronutrient fertilizer Excellerator, decided to look at this technol- ogy in conjunction with TurfScout as a way to capture reflectance as an indirect indicator of turf quality following Excellerator applications to three golf course greens. “We were happy to find that the re- flectance data revealed clear areas of turf response to Excellerator- www.stma.org SportsTurf 43 kind of approach spans both research and golf course management. Bruce Martin, Ph.D. at Clemson University is currently using Smart Maps and Charts to support his research program and evaluate turfgrass man- agement strategies. “TurfScout has created a very convenient way to couple objective reflectance data, such as NDVI and RVI measurements [both are near-infrared and red reflectance indices], with precision GPS to create maps, manage data and provide a near real-time evaluation of experiments in progress. I think the data and their programs for data management enhance and help to validate our more subjective ratings. Both are needed, along with ‘ground-truth’ measurements and examina- tions of stressed turf to provide a good evaluation of turf management strategies,” says Martin.■ Dana Sullivan, Ph.D. has more than 10 years experience in precision agriculture and remotely sensed data analysis.