The green movement affects many aspects of the golf industry and has led to heightened attention to the role of courses on the local environment.
While researchers have of course looked at the effects of runoff and potential non-point source pollution on stream chemistry, much less work has been done on studying the effects of physical properties of streams such as temperature.
Georgia Southern University researcher Kevin Scavenger, and his team recently studied ratio analysis of running water temperature at six different golf courses in Greenville, South Carolina. Scavenger's water temperature monitors the flow on every course, especially in places where there is continuous, tributary-free and lake-free reach through the golf course.
"We chose a continuous, tributary-free stream to ensure that our results only reflect changes in temperature caused by the golf course," Scavenger explained. "We also chose a lake-free stream to show that even without the lake, which would affect stream temperature, there is still a significant temperature increase downstream."
As part of their monitoring strategy, Scavenger and his team chose HOBO Pro v2 temperature loggers from Massachusetts Emergence.
Water temperature loggers, the size of miniature flashlights, were secured to the bottom of the stream at each selected course, and water temperature was measured every 5 minutes upstream and downstream of the site, away from it.
"We looked for a temperature logger that was accurate, reliable, durable, and easy to use," says Scavenger. "Setting up the deployment of the U22-001 was quick and easy and we could move the data from the field. The U22-001 also needed to be durable as they sit on the river bed and all kinds of debris from upstream could come into contact with them."
The data logger U22-001's ±0.2°C accuracy over a wide temperature range provides a 42,000-measurement storage capacity, making them suitable for long-term deployment.
Data from the water temperature logger can be quickly offloaded directly via a laptop via a USB-based optical interface providing high-speed, reliable data in wet environments. Its broken optical design does not require mechanical connectors found in many traditional underwater data logger products.
Data Analysis Using HOBOware® professional graphing and analysis software, the collected data is converted into easy-to-read graphs that reveal water temperature peaks.
In addition to water temperature, several other parameters are monitored in golf course streams, including stream flow measurements under baseflow conditions, the length of streams between sampling sites, the extent along river bank banks, and any human alterations to the stream's passage.
"The data show that stream temperatures are higher at 4º10°F during the afternoon hours, and have significantly greater diurnal temperature ranges -- typically two to three times that of their upstream counterparts," Scavenger said.
According to Scavenger, the difference in water temperature between the upstream and downstream sites is mainly due to the lack of river bank reach along the golf course and, to a lesser extent, changes in the structure of the river course.
"While the effects of these temperature modifications on the ecology, biology and chemistry of stream systems are not known, the magnitude of the temperature change is large enough to have potential consequences," Scavenger said.
