When it comes to the sustainable management of the world’s golf courses, irrigation has always been a hot-potato issue. To help clarify the issues surrounding this controversy, researchers from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands recently published the results of a 25-year study that analyzed the way one of Spain’s oldest golf courses uses reclaimed water for irrigation. The researchers concluded that the course’s plants are overwatered by an astonishing 83 percent.
"Excessive amounts of water are used...this cannot be justified from any perspective," according to lead author Maria del Pino Palacios Diaz of the university’s Department of Animal Pathology, Animal Production and Food Science and Technology.
Although the cost of water in the area is considered exorbitant, local golf courses continue to use more water than necessary. Overwatering the plants by such a high percentage helps to keep substances from building up in the soil, but raises the chance that the water in the aquifer beneath the area will be (Read More....)
