| dc.description.abstract | Given increased scrutiny over water use in urban green spaces, efficient management of water for turfgrass irrigation is imperative due to climate uncertainties and rapid urban population growth. For home lawns, water purveyors and municipalities commonly enforce landscape watering restrictions aimed at mitigating domestic water use in order to ensure adequate water supplies for growing populations and during times of drought. However, information is lacking concerning minimal irrigation frequency requirements needed to sustain aesthetically pleasing and functional warm-season turfgrass systems in southern climates. On golf courses and sports field turf areas, there has been an increasing trend of capping native soils with sand due in order to better cope with poor water quality. However, there is currently a lack of information on spatiotemporal variability of soil-moisture as well as irrigation best management practices for sand-capped systems. Therefore, a series of field studies were conducted in College Station, TX, to 1) evaluate turf response of commonly used warm-season turfgrass species subjected to five irrigation frequency regimes, 2) compare turf performance, soil moisture and salinity dynamics, and water use of four irrigation scheduling approaches in sand-capped systems, and 3) investigate factors contributing to spatiotemporal heterogeneity of soil water relations in sand-capped fairway systems. Our results demonstrate that warm-season turfgrasses can maintain acceptable visual quality while being irrigated at frequencies limited to once per week; however, species and variety selection are critical for maintaining aesthetically pleasing turf with implementation of more restrictive policies. In sand-capped systems, acceptable levels of turfgrass quality were maintained under all irrigation scheduling approaches including wireless soil moisture sensor-based, on-site reference evapotranspiration-based, Forecasted Reference Evapotranspiration-based, and visual wilt-based. Also, forecasted reference evapotranspiration appeared to be a reliable indicator of bermudagrass seasonal water needs and an accurate predictor of reference evapotranspiration. In our investigation of soil moisture variability within sand-capped fairways, considerable spatiotemporal variability was observed within two fairways evaluated following dry downs from rainfall and irrigation. Further, the factors contributing to variability in soil moisture did not translate between rainfall versus irrigation, days after dry down, or fairways. Overall, the findings from this research provide timely and practical information that municipalities, water purveyors, homeowners and turfgrass practitioners should be able to utilize for optimizing turfgrass ecosystem services while meeting landscape water conservation goals. | en |
