Monthly Feature Hosted By:
	Anthony L. Williams, CGCS at Marriott’s Stone Mountain Golf Club in Georgia

The day is coming where it will be as common to know your course’s carbon footprint statistics as it is to know how fast your greens are rolling on the stimp meter prior to your club championship. Terms such as environmental balance sheet and environomics will become useful tools for a superintendent to show the value of their property in terms of carbon storage and sequestration, storm water runoff reduction, air quality - removal of pollutants, energy conservation via cooling and habitat conservation.

Dan Dinelli, the Certified Golf Course Superintendent, at North Shore Country Club in Glenview, Illinois shares a great case study with us demonstrating how he was able to use the CITYgreen software program from American Forests to document some of his property’s environmental assets. The information is cutting edge, very interesting, and provides a step by step guide on how Dan implemented this program complete with enhanced satellite images from ArcView, a Geographical Information System (GIS). He also utilized the services of a certified arborist which I highly recommend. If you want to carry this concept to the next level you may consider attaining certified arborist status. I recently completed the arborist certification and it has become a huge asset for me and our property during these tough economic times.

The CITYgreen program currently does not include the added value of turf areas; however there are several research projects underway to capture the total value of golf courses to the overall ecosystem. I hope you will take some time to see how this information can help your operation and keep us all focused on increasing Golf’s role in environmental stewardship.

February's Guests:
Thomas Rufty, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental Plant Physiology, North Carolina State University	Nick Hamon, Ph.D., Director of Development and Technical Services, Bayer Environmental Science and Adjunct Professor of Entomology, NCSU

We commend Dan Dinelli for his somewhat pioneering approach in evaluating the environmental value of North Shore Country Club. We are in a time of increasing environmental awareness that is permeating all segments of society. It is also inevitable that we know the economic value of green space, especially in these precarious economic times. Studies like this will be more commonplace in the future as we justify, holistically, the value of environmental resources.

One of the important issues touched on in the North Shore study is carbon sequestration. They used ‘CITYgreen’, a program designed primarily for assessment of forested areas. A missing component in the program is carbon sequestration in the turfgrass system itself. Turfgrass on fairways, greens, tees and roughs contributes a large portion of the carbon sequestration potential of this course and 18,000 others in the U.S., and the turfgrass may be of direct economic value.

The issue of carbon sequestration is likely to increase in importance in the U.S. in the near future. Most in the scientific community agree that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations stemming from burning of fossil fuels - coal and petroleum - are driving a ‘greenhouse effect’, where global temperatures may increase as much as 6 to 7°F in the decades ahead (http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg3.htm). Global warming clearly could have large-scale negative consequences for societies worldwide. A recent study by U.S. and European scientists predicts that stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations at the current 385 ppm or lower is essential for maintaining the world climate as we know it (Hansen et al. 2008. The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2: 217-231).

The most obvious step in stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is to reduce CO2 emissions. But, an important part also may be to increase carbon sequestration in long-term storage pools like forests and agricultural systems. Turfgrasses now occupy about 165,000 km2 in the continental U.S. (Agron J 95: 558, 2003; Environmental Management 36: 426, 2005), primarily due to lawns, roadsides, and recreation areas associated with population growth and urbanization. If maintained, turfgrasses can rapidly grow, fix CO2 from the atmosphere, and potentially sequester large carbon pools in soil.

The most effective model for controlling CO2 emissions has been put in place by the European Union. Mandated by the European Parliament and facilitated through private market platforms such as the European Climate Exchange (ECX), this ‘cap and trade’ system uses a market-based mechanism to achieve environmental goals. The EU has placed caps on CO2 emissions by energy-intensive industries. If companies exceed caps, stiff penalties can be avoided only if they purchase ‘allowances’ or ‘credits’ in the market. A similar but voluntary system is in place in the U.S. – The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). The CCX includes a ‘carbon offset’ program, where carbon sequestration contracts are bought and sold. If caps on CO2 emissions are put into place in the years ahead by federal legislation, as expected, soil carbon sequestered under turfgrass areas on golf courses would qualify as a credit activity and have a market value that could be traded.

These are truly extraordinary times, and tackling large scale issues like atmospheric CO2 requires new collaborations between the private sector and public institutions. Recently Bayer Environmental Science formalized a relationship with N.C. State University to examine the carbon sequestration potential of well maintained turfgrass systems in the southeastern U.S. Soils of the region typically are ‘carbon poor’ because of relatively high rainfall and temperatures that lead to rapid organic matter breakdown. Yet recent scientific studies show that organic matter can accumulate to relatively high levels in well maintained turfgrass systems. This project is part of a larger N.C. State/ Bayer collaboration to develop biodiverse, sustainable urban systems that positively contribute to carbon sequestration while having minimal adverse impacts on the environment.