A web portal developed by University of Florida researchers that will help individual golf properties tailor environmentally friendly best practices to their specific needs is scheduled to be available by August. Web portals for each state are also targeted for development by 2020.
A web portal developed through a University of Florida-led project that will help individual golf courses tailor environmentally friendly best practices to their specific needs is scheduled to launch this August, The Alligator of Gainesville, Fla. reported.
The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) commissioned the University of Florida (UF) to develop the online manual-creating system in 2015, through a research grant of $47,358, The Alligator reported.
Mark Johnson, the GCSAA’s Associate Director, Environmental Programs, issued a proposal request to researchers for ideas to try to help reverse poor environmental policies and make U.S. golf courses more eco-friendly, The Alligator reported, and UF received the grant because the state of Florida had already developed and communicated specific best-practice guidelines for golf course management.
“For many, many years, the golf industry did not communicate what they were doing,” Johnson said. But as Bryan Unruh, a Professor of Environmental Horticulture at UF, told The Alligator, he had already worked alongside a team of researchers from other universities to implement change in the industry since 2003.
Now, through the research grant, a web portal is being developed that will outline more environmentally friendly practices based off of each golf course’s needs. This portal was created to help connect courses with best-management practices on a customized basis and to mitigate general environmental misconceptions, Johnson said.
When it is launched, The Alligator reported, golf course management personnel will be able to go into the portal and enter specific course characteristics, such as weather conditions and water drainage. The portal will then tailor available best practices to the individual needs of specific courses, their conditions and their constraints, drawing from “the shared language between regulation agencies, activists and scientists,” Unruh said.
Unruh’s online manual will go beyond the permit-driven Clean Water Act of 1972, The Alligator reported, by having whole sections of best-management practices in areas such as energy conservation and protecting pollen producers.
The researchers also have a goal of having a web portal for each state by 2020, Unruh said.
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