| Abstract/Contents: | "This project is monitoring some soil quality criteria needed to assess the long-term impact and sustainability of golf courses on the environment. The research was initiated on a native grassland destined to become Colbert Hills Golf Course, near Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Colbert Hills has been designed as a "living laboratory" by KSU to highlight its utility for research in environmental resources and turf management. This situation presents a unique opportunity to characterize site resources prior to construction and follow the long-term impacts and changes brought on by construction, use, and management of the facility. The golf industry needs this information to realistically understand its environmental impact, to formulate knowledgeable responses to public inquiries, to establish management strategies for new courses, and to provide knowledge for future planning and growth. Relevance of Soil Quality to Golf Courses: Golf courses are only as sustainable as their weakest natural component, which can often be soil quality. The inherent sustainability of managed areas can be viewed as inversely proportional to the level of management needed to maintain it. Golf courses that diverge the most from their natural surroundings require the highest levels of management inputs to remain sustainable. Soils plays a central role in determining the sustainable land use potential of golf courses. Soil influences such critical properties as; leaching, aeration, fertility, water relations, rooting, microbiological activity, and chemical use, detoxification, and effectiveness. A carefully selected set of properties, matched to the intended use of the soil, can be monitored as indicators of soil quality change. As these soil quality indicators degrade, they become the primary factors preventing superintendents from achieving course conditions expected by their management and players. The influence of siting, constructing, developing, and using a golf course on these indicators will ultimately determine both the sustainability of a course and the level of management necessary for day-to-day operations. This project is initiating a process of tracking changes to soil quality indicators during the life of a golf course. To evaluate the relative sustainability of different soils, soil scientists use indicators of soil qualtiy. Selection of soil quality indicators should be related to soil use but reliable indicators for golf course soils have not yet been studied. This study will extend the concept of soil quality by identifying those indicators specifcally important to the construction and sustainable use of a golf course. 1998 Research: Construction on Colbert Hills began in May, 1998. Prior to construction, we made field observation and collected soil samples to establish base-line values for critical indicators of soil quality. Starting in the spring and summer of 1997, soil scientists from Kansas State University and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) identified and mapped nine soil series on the site. By combining soil maps and architectural drawings of the course, we have located soil types according to their fairway and rough locations. Two sites for each soil type were selected and marked by global positioning for future referencing. One site was located in a fairway and one in an adjacent rough. The fairway site will be subject to the expected disturbances accompanying course construction. The site in the rough will be undisturbed. For each soil type identified, a put was dug and the soil profile was fully characterized according to NRCS field standards. Loose samples for further analysis were collected from each horizon down to bedrock or to a depth of at least 2 meters. Sampling and Analyses Began and/or Completed: Soil Map of Colber Hills (A soil map has been nearly completed at a scale = 1:7920 (8 inches per mile). At this scale the map is 4 times more detailed than maps typically found in soil survey reports); Soil characterization (Open pit identification of horizonation, depth, texture, color, structure, consistency, and pore and root distribution as per the USDA-NRCS Soil Survey Investigation Report No. 42, Version 3.0, Soil Survey Methods Laboratory Manual (1996).); Soil series identification (Surface texture, slope, depth, drainage, permeability, physiographic location, and parent material.); Soil sample collection and and laboratory analysis (Operations performed using standard methodology as published in the American Society of Agronomy Monograph No. 9, Methods of Soil Analysis (1965); For each present we have determined: depth, bulk density, pH, (1:1 water), pH (2:1 CaCl2), total nitrogen (%), total carbon (%), microbial biomass nitrogen (ug g-1), microbial biomass carbon (ug g-1).)." |
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