Where are we going with water?

Adrian Mortram is an irrigation consultant with many years of experience improving water availability on golf courses. Adrian is a regular speaker at Continue to Learn and will be taking part in the education programme this coming January.

As I look out of my office window over the local recreation ground, all I can see is an area of light brown, bleached-coloured turfgrass. With the high temperatures of this summer, turfgrasses have endured very high evapotranspiration rates. This meant turfgrass plants, unless they were irrigated with enough water, are likely to be in a state of dormancy.

© Simon Lambert. The view from Seaford Head down the coast

When the water available in the soil is very low and there comes a point when grass plants can no longer extract any remaining water in the soil. If there is zero water uptake, the wilting point is reached. This is why it is so important to aim for good agronomy and a deeper rooting with dense root biomass, so more water within the soil profile becomes available to the grass plant and it is therefore less prone to drought.

In terms of irrigation, I know that many golf courses and sporting facilities will be concerned about availability of water for irrigation. Unfortunately, in times like these there is a need to work with what is available to you and ensure sufficient planning and water budgeting is in place so that critical surfaces (greens, for example) can be irrigated with less critical surfaces receiving little or even no water.

During drought periods, it is inevitable that there are those who criticise golf facilities for using water to irrigate their course. But did you know that 400 households, daily flushing toilets and showering, use a similar amount of water as an average greens and tees irrigation system for an 18-hole golf course?

In 2012 I wrote an article detailing how water will be increasingly in demand in the future and this has proved true. Water is not a finite resource and golf courses must make provision for the future. The way forward must be through a better understanding of the use of our precious resource. Golf courses in Britain, Europe and further afield have had success with continued use of summer abstraction rights when they have been able to demonstrate they are being proactive in their effective and efficient use of water.  The use of water meters to monitor and record specific water use for irrigation purposes are today essential to protect your rights to this water as this provides information which can be presented as hard evidence. 

Although potentially expensive, in a time when cash is tight, water collection or water farming must also be considered. If collected, 25mm (1inch) of rainfall falling on roofs and car parks over one hectare (2.5 acres) could yield 250m³. Of course, it is not as simple as that and the ‘grey’ water would need to be treated through reed beds, ultraviolet (UV) light or similar and pumped to a storage facility. New developments could also make use of non-soiled water resources (baths, showers and kitchens).

Irrigation design must rank high in the efficiency of any irrigation system and will save water when coupled with a detailed knowledge and understanding of the equipment available in the marketplace.

Careful and diligent identification of areas to be irrigated is a necessary principal choice. A tees and greens-only system will use considerably less water than a wall-to-wall fairway design. Indeed, there is little use in aspiring for a wall-to-wall fairway design if the water source is limited to supply only sufficient water to manage tees and greens, unless storage and alternative sources are considered. 

Sprinkler arc settings set to 180 degrees rather than 360 degrees will reduce water application volumes, providing the sprinkler run times are adjusted accordingly. Deciding the priorities and parameters of your irrigation requirements is a matter of individual choice. Areas can be targeted accurately for specific irrigation needs and one only needs to witness the accuracy of targeted areas demonstrated on desert courses in both America and the Middle East.

Accurate monitoring and recording of soil moisture deficit conditions will allow the irrigation manager to balance and modify the daily application rate. After a period of natural precipitation, it is not only pointless but profligate to apply irrigation which takes the soil moisture level above field capacity. The days of 10 minutes per night to all areas of the course are over. Water balance sheets were the standard instrument to calculate the amount of water required daily, but have now been superseded by weather stations and soil moisture monitors that can even be directly linked to the irrigation central computer controller.

Too often, when making a return site visit to a golf club where an irrigation system has been installed, the initial programme has not been altered or modified to suit the needs of the individual venue. Workshops on irrigation design and maintenance are available at BTME on a very regular basis.

The moves toward improved sustainability within our industry are something which, quite rightly, are here to stay. The advancement in irrigation design, irrigation central control and sprinkler technologies are a vital piece of the jigsaw and irrigation manufacturers are constantly striving to ensure the efficient use of water by their products. One area in which advancements are rarely mentioned is turf grasses species.  We irrigate to ensure the survival of the grasses that make up our playing surfaces and it is their requirement for water that ultimately determines how much we apply. The use of improved cultivars of grasses which have a lower water use rate and those with deeper, denser rooting to ensure water availability in the soil is maximised, is a must.

The composition of the rootzone is also an important factor and how this is managed an even more important factor, so best practice should be observed.

Undoubtedly there is going to be more pressure on our most precious resource, water, in future. Water will become the new ‘oil’ and the water framework directive is forming the basis of the UK Government’s mandate moving forward to ensure we use it wisely. As an industry, our practices are often more efficient than other industries whose use of water is far greater than ours. Perhaps our voice is sometimes least heard or dare I say least recognised, even though we provide pleasure and enjoyment for so many of the population.

In conclusion, we need to communicate our need for water is only to sustain, not promote growth to ensure a consistant and quality playing surface. Communicate with your membership and explain the principles of water management; audit (and where necessary upgrade) your irrigation system to ensure you have an efficient system design; look objectively at water farming; identify your priorities for irrigation in a worst-case scenario; but above all, be proactive in your water management policy.

Continue the conversation: Adrian is on Twitter at @AdrianMortram