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NCCOS South Carolina Golf Course Research Addresses Growing Coastal/Population Pressures
An innovative partnership among coastal management researchers hopes to identify cost-effective ways to better manage valuable land – and in particular golf courses – surrounding estuaries and thousands of residential retention ponds along the southeastern Atlantic Coast from the Carolinas to Florida.
Tom Siewicki, an environmental toxicologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Charleston, S.C.-based Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research, says a primary objective of the research on golf courses is to demonstrate a quantitative relationship between land uses and contaminant loadings to estuaries. A demonstrated mathematical relationship between the two, he points out, would help policy makers and golf course managers better determine how best to curb runoff contamination posing risks to fragile coastal resources.
About one-tenth of the U.S.'s population of nearly 287 million people qualify as golfers, at least as weekend duffers. As the nation’s population continues to age and retire and find more spare time, demographics experts say those numbers will increase.
Americans played some 586 million rounds of golf in 2002, according to the National Golf Federation, which says some 277 new golf courses opened around the United States in that year alone. The golf industry trade group says the U.S. was home to some 17,816 golf courses as of June 30, 2002, an increase from 7,500 over the previous four decades.
With more than half of the U.S. population living along the nation’s coasts, golf courses and other infrastructure and amenities linked to human uses increasingly are sited in often-sensitive coastal areas.
“We think our research can help coastal landscape planners and natural resources agencies minimize impacts from inevitable coastal development,” says Siewicki. “One goal is to evaluate the amount of nutrient uptake carried out by aquatic vegetation. Working with our local partners, we've removed some overhanging vegetation from the ponds and replaced it with a common grass found throughout the marsh. Sunlight now can better reach the aquatic vegetation we plant there. But we have to take care to do so in a way that avoids removing current or historical nesting sites or other valuable habitat.”
The pond restoration activities are being undertaken with help from teacher Amy Litz’s advanced biology students at nearby Summerville High School.
“Involved in virtually all aspects of the bioremediation study, our students have been active in restoring habitat and monitoring results of the restoration effort,” Litz says. “They've been planting Spartina alterniflora, an emergent smooth-cordgrass common in our saltmarshes, and establishing colonies of eastern oysters in ponds and adjacent marshes.”
The students' monitoring data are being entered into a GIS (geographical information system) database and coordinated with projects linking land uses of typical southeastern coastal developments with estuaries' water quality. In addition to providing the young scientists with valuable hands-on field research experience, the project has become an important part of the school's entire teaching curriculum.
“The research will help us improve water quality so numerous species benefit,” says Norm Shea, director of lakes management with the Kiawah Island Community Association. “The improved conditions will also help reduce loss of fish and crab populations that often results from degraded water quality and oxygen depletion.”
“Our goal is to provide alternative development and management practices that can reduce levels of runoff and contaminants to nearby estuaries.”
The researchers launched their investigations with an in-depth look at two residential retention ponds and a golf course pond on South Carolina's Kiawah Island (pronounced KEE-a-wah, after the Kiawah Indians who inhabited it up to the 1600s).
The 10,000-acre, 10-mile long island, located 21 miles south of Charleston, is characterized by a 100-yard-wide low-tide beach and is home to a maritime forest of oaks, palmetto, pines, hickories, sweetgum, and magnolia. Kiawah is home also to 18 species of mammals and more than 30 reptiles and amphibians, including alligators and sea turtles.
With about 45 miles of upland edge overlooking the island’s ponds and lakes and the Kiawah River, the Island hosts more than 190 species of birds, including the Brown Pelican, Wood Stork, White Ibis and also ospreys, ducks, sea gulls, terns, herons, hawks and egrets. More than 400 families, from 46 states and nearly two-dozen foreign countries, make Kiawah Island their year-round home.
Shea says an objective of the research being carried out with NOAA technical and financial leadership is to show how aquatic vegetation and bivalves can be used in managing water quality in an urban setting. His organization manages 113 tidal ponds and adjacent riparian buffers throughout the Island. He is optimistic that many other similar coastal resources along the southeastern Atlantic Ocean can benefit from the research findings.
Long before their Kiawah Island research effort got under way, Siewicki and Shea and their research colleagues of course had been well aware of studies in the Southeast and elsewhere linking up-land runoff with contamination of down-stream rivers and estuaries.
But golf courses are a special kind of land use, one of increasing importance along the coasts, and much less is known about potential impacts of golf courses and other turf management practices on estuarine systems. South Carolina, ranking 26th by population among the states, is 16th in the number of golf courses, and Kiawah Island's famed courses twice in recent years have hosted the prestigious Ryder Cup golf classic.
Like their counterparts across the U.S., golf course managers in the Southeast often use sewage effluent to irrigate greens and fairways. Also like their counterparts elsewhere, they must deal with their region’s particular climatic and geographic conditions.
In southeastern coastal areas, that means they are often dealing with porous soils, high rainfall levels, and hot and humid conditions well suited to proliferation of pests. Maintaining golf course greens and fairways under those conditions can lead to more extensive applications of pesticides and fertilizers than is normal in other regions.
Associated contaminants can percolate through those porous coastal soils to the shallow groundwater and can taint surface runoff when it rains. The result can be a buildup of fecal coliform bacteria or of a harmful condition known as eutrophication, excessive nutrient loadings in aquatic systems and adjacent wetlands.
Adding to the challenge facing the scientists is the fact that some 212,000 acres of South Carolina’s estuarine shellfish beds have been closed in recent years largely because of concerns related to fecal coliform contamination.
“The extent to which South Carolina estuaries and others along the Atlantic Coast are affected by nutrients and coliform-containing runoff from resort communities is still poorly understood,” Siewicki says. “By focusing on potential impacts these types of developments may have on chemical loadings and microbial stressors, we hope to offer new ways for better protecting these valuable coastal resources.”
He says that more than 300 small nonriverine estuaries within the southeastern U.S. are largely underdeveloped, yet vulnerable to pressures arising from nearby commercial and residential development. The fact that those estuaries are not flushed by inflow from a river leaves them particularly vulnerable to contamination. Beyond those nonriverine estuaries, some 11,000 residential retention ponds along the southeastern Atlantic Ocean also stand to benefit from the research.
Conduct of the Golf Course Research
The research under way at the Kiawah Island golf and resort community sites is benefiting significantly from recent advances in technology, without which, Siewicki says, such research previously had been extremely difficult.
“The dynamic and complex nature of critical estuarine ecosystems historically has inhibited successful development of geographic and spatial models for use by coastal zone and fisheries managers,” he explains.
“Continuing development of spatial and analytical techniques now is allowing scientists to develop predictive models of how ecosystems and their numerous components respond to natural and developmental stresses. These models and techniques use land-use patterns and practices, integrated toxicological and risk assessment modeling, and geographic information to provide valid and timely information critical to effective coastal zone management.”
The overall approach to the research involves:
use of digital elevation model basemaps and landcover maps of subwatersheds;
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installation of surface and subsurface hydrology and sampling equipment such as wells, meteorological stations, water level and flow monitors, and groundwater level recorders;
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sampling and analyses of surface and groundwater for fecal coliform bacteria, multiple antibiotic resistance, nutrient concentrations and some pesticide concentrations;
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use of GIS statistical models to characterize relationships between land uses and nutrient loadings, allowing researchers to define and predict contaminant concentrations in particular climate and weather conditions.
As part of their research, the scientists installed digital cameras in the residential study site to estimate wildlife activity. Their preliminary research results suggest most of the coliform bacteria buildup is associated with various wildlife.
In addition,Town of Kiawah spot light surveys indicate deer densities of roughly 107 per square mile, and scent station surveys indicate very high raccoon populations, again a likely contributor to the fecal coliform buildups.
At the two residential area ponds along Kiawah Island's Trumpet Creeper Lane, the researchers deployed noiseless, body-heat activated infrared cameras, using corn as a bait attractant. Their programmable wide-angle high-resolution cameras collected five photos at 15-minute intervals at dawn, mid-day, and dusk, and they recorded the numbers and types of animals to provide a site-specific wildlife activity index. They also live-captured seven raccoons and fitted them with individually marked collars to improve wildlife population estimates.
With a recent upgrade of an existing hydro model, the research team now can predict how water will flow through an ecosystem and also how contaminants may become entrained and flow in that water. As a map-based computer software system, that new technology allows the researchers not only to do their modeling on a map but also, for the first time, to get high-quality map-based results.
With those tools in hand, the researchers simulate nutrient and coliform loadings to receiving estuaries during major rain events. They plan to use their findings to offer recommendations for other sites to consider. Their recommendations likely will take the shape of best management practices golf course managers can use to avoid unintended nonpoint source pollution runoff from their sites to nearby coastal estuaries.
By working with the high school biology students to replace less desirable vegetation with the Spartina, the dominant salt marsh emergent vegetation, and by introducing oysters, the researchers hope to remove much of the nutrient loading and bacteria from the study ponds.
For the duration of the study, the students are conducting monthly analyses to measure the health of the Spartina and oysters, and also to calculate effects on the ponds themselves.
Ms. Litz, the student's teacher, says the student researchers plan to publish results of their research and restoration work so that students elsewhere can learn from those experiences and apply those lessons in their own communities.
There’s a whole lot that goes into a golf course and also into a day on the links. The South Carolina golf course research shows that there's even more behind the scenes in determining, and minimizing, potential adverse effects on nearby fragile ecosystems. The next time you see a foursome out on a Kiawah Island fairway, don't be surprised to find some of them having a far greater understanding of the course dynamics than the average weekend duffer.
