Quantifying golf course water use efficiency using three water balance models of varying complexity

Background

Three water balance models were used to quantify water use efficiency on 71 golf courses in the United States. The golf courses were separated into five geographic regions.

Methods

The United States Golf Association (USGA), Tipping-Bucket (TB), and Agro-IBIS (AG) water balance models were used to estimate golf course water requirements. Actual water use was divided by the water requirement from each model to generate three water efficiency scores for each golf course (WES_USGA, WES_TB, and WES_AG).

Results

The mean WES_USGA was 1.16, the mean WES_TB was 1.25, and the mean WES_AG was 1.17. Thus, golf courses in this study used between 16% and 25% more water than predicted by the three models. The coefficients of variation of WES_USGA, WES_TB, and WES_AG were all 0.45 or higher, indicating that some golf courses used significantly more or less water than predicted by the models. Rooting depth, irrigated area, and soil texture were especially important modeling parameters for the golf course water requirement calculations.

Conclusions

While onsite evaluation should still be carried out to verify the assumptions made by the water balance models, the models are promising tools to quickly identify golf course superintendents who are likely to be using water efficiently and those who could use less.