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 Qian notes there was no hard data for turf when the Colorado State group started its research in 2000. It was tough even to find car- bon data on farmland. “On turf, there was no data at all,” she says. Golf courses figure most heavily in the Colorado State research. That is because turf management records were available for years, even decades on the sites the CSU researchers studied. Critical bench- marks identified during the project provide information that will allow the golf course management community to improve resource use efficiencies and bolster environmental performance. “Carbon sequestration as only one side of the equation. The other side is carbon emissions.” – Qian One reason the CSU study focuses so heavily on golf courses as a function of sports turf is the number of acres golf courses keep green. According to the World Golf Foundation's "The Golf 20/20 Industry Report,” there are about 15,000 golf courses in the United States. The GCSAA (Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, www.gcsaa.org) puts the size of a typical 18-hole golf facil- ity at 150-200 acres total, including water bodies, hard structures, and out-of-play areas. A typical urban golf course might be only 110-120 acres, and courses in resort areas may be 170-190 acres. While not all of this is managed turf, all of the green areas can ab- sorb carbon. On the other hand, a typical soccer or football field is about one acre in size. Even a college complex with a dozen or more fields would represent only a fraction of the managed turf area of the typical golf course. But keep in mind that all sports turf can contribute positively to carbon sequestration. The Colorado State study is only one of many studies that point up the value of sports turf for carbon sequestration. The biology de- partments at such diverse spots as Cornell University; Bradley Univer- sity, Peoria, Illinois; and Missouri Southern State University in Joplin have done similar work on a somewhat smaller scale. No matter the geography, these studies point in the same direction. Because of high productivity and lack of soil disturbance, turfgrass may be making substantial contributions to sequester atmospheric carbon. To determine the rate and capacity of soil carbon sequestra- tion, Yaling Qian and Ronald Follett at the USDA-ARS, Soil-Plant- Nutrient Research Unit in Fort Collins compiled historic soil-testing data from parts of 15 golf courses that were near Denver and Fort Collins, and one golf course near Saratoga, WY. In addition, they compiled 690 data sets on previous land use, soil texture, grass species and type, fertilization rate, irrigation, and other management practices. The oldest golf course was 45 years old when the project was initiated, and the newest golf course was just over a year old. Nonlinear regression analysis of compiled historic data indicated strong pattern of SOM response to decades of turf- grass culture. “The strength of our project was based on having 690 data points,” Qian notes. 10 SportsTurf | April 2011 The study shows that total carbon sequestration continued to in- crease for up to 31 years in fairways and 45 years in putting greens. However, the most rapid increase occurred during the first 25 to 30 years after turfgrass establishment. Past land use imparted a strong control of SOM baseline: in fact, fairways converted from farm lands exhibited 24% lower SOM than fairways converted from native grass- lands. That led the researchers to conclude that carbon sequestration in turf soils occurs at a significant rate that is comparable to the rate of carbon sequestration reported for land that was placed in the Conser- vation Reserve Program. Translated into everyday terms, the typical fairway (between 1.5 and 2 acres) will sequester three-quarters of a ton of carbon each year. That is the rough equivalent of removing the carbon caused by driv- ing a car 6,500 miles. A one-acre soccer field removes carbon equivalent to driving a car over 3,000 miles. Disturbing such soil for any reason will add more oxygen to the soil, Qian notes. “The more disturbance the more you degrade the organic matter,” she says. A renovation will put some carbon back into the atmosphere. But tearing the golf course up and building on the land will release great quantities of carbon to the atmosphere and destroy the valuable carbon sink. This is one of the first studies of turfgrass that received strong co- operation from USDA-ARS. While USDA did not provide financial support, the research was a collaborative effort. Sports turf is less com- petitive when it comes to grabbing a part of the USDA research-dol- lar pie. This usually is credited to the fact that sports turf is seen as non-essential when compared to food and fiber research. So the big money normally goes to grasses like corn and wheat – and not Ken- tucky blue or turf-type fescues. This time, USDA-ARS was interested in the carbon sequestration work. The reason has roots in the need to establish just what is hap- pening to carbon in the environment in an era when the term “cli- mate change” has gone well beyond research labs and into the halls of Congress and the front pages of the New York Times. The Colorado State study is doubly important to the sports turf industry because sports turf got slammed in reports, some done in California, which painted a bleak picture of the value of sports turf when it comes to carbon sequestration. Terrestrial carbon sequestration is defined by NETL as the net re- moval of CO2 from the atmosphere by plants and microorganisms in the soil and the prevention of CO2 net emissions from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere. “There is significant opportunity to use terrestrial sequestration both to reduce CO2 emissions and to secure additional benefits, such as habitat and water quality improvements that often result from such projects,” NETL scientists say. In principle, terrestrial sequestration is the enhancement of the CO2 uptake by plants that grow on land and in freshwater and, im- portantly, the enhancement of carbon storage in soils where it may re- main more permanently stored. Part of NETL’s interest in terrestrial sequestration is that it provides an opportunity for low-cost CO2 emissions offsets. Early efforts had included tree plantings, no-till farming, and for- www.sportsturfonline.com