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Calculating the value of green
A Chicago-area superintendent uses technology to measure environmental benefits in dollars.
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Though North Shore CC lost about 100 trees during a microburst storm in August 2007, the club still boasts nearly 2,100 trees and 97 species. This willow tree on the course’s No. 3 tee was lost to the storm. |
Despite their obvious ecological attributes, golf courses remain a hard sell among today’s non-golfing public when it comes to their environmental benefits. While superintendents have made significant strides in recent years publicizing the virtues of their green spaces, a general perception of golf as harmful to the environment still persists.
One reason for this is that while it’s easy to calculate the value of fuel-sipping hybrid cars and carbon-cutting chainsaws, it’s difficult to measure the environmental footprint of golf courses. More precisely, it’s hard for anyone to put a dollar figure on how green a golf course really is.
Until now.
Thanks to a software program called CityGreen, North Shore Country Club, Glenview, Ill., recently completed a report that quantifies the club’s ecological and economic value in terms of a number of environmental metrics, including air pollution removal, stormwater runoff and carbon sequestration.
Originally designed to help city planners, the software, developed by Washington, D.C.-based American Forests, is a geographic information system-based mapping tool that computes the environmental value of trees in urban areas. Based on the program’s calculations, North Shore’s 18-hole property, which occupies 176 acres in a densely populated suburb north of Chicago, provides the local community with an estimated annual ecological/environmental value of $31,888.
That figure isn’t likely to excite the likes of Al Gore, but for North Shore’s superintendent, Dan Dinelli, CGCS, the number represents the first step toward developing what he calls an “environmental balance sheet” for the golf industry.
“We all know it takes energy and inputs to maintain a golf course, and golf courses are far from being sustainable,” says Dinelli, a 25-year GCSAA member. “To be better stewards, we need to improve our understanding of what our bigger energy-consuming areas are, what’s impacting our footprint the greatest, and on the flip side, what we can do to manage the landscape that could enhance the environmental benefits. This program is a start by providing hard numbers for trees, not just rough guesstimates.”
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Dan Dinelli, CGCS at North Shore CC, regularly gives tours of the golf course to local officials and the public to demonstrate the value of a golf property to the community. Through a software tool, Dinelli estimated the golf course’s various species of trees offer a value of more than $30,000 to the community. |
Preparing for the worst
Dinelli’s initial interest in the CityGreen program didn’t stem from a desire to make a statement, but rather to predict what might happen if North Shore were hit by the emerald ash borer. The Chinese beetle, which has a ravenous appetite for ash trees, has killed more than 20 million trees in the Midwest and was detected in the spring of 2006 a few miles east of the club. Preparing for a likely infestation, Dinelli last fall decided to undertake a tree inventory. While researching on the Internet one evening, he stumbled upon CityGreen.
The discovery was timely. Over the past several years, North Shore, a fully certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary since 1998, has GPS-mapped new irrigation, drainage, topography, soil types, surface water flow, as well as greens, tees, fairways, ponds, detention ponds, cart paths and buildings in tandem with course improvements. The last layer to add was CityGreen, an extension to the ArcView GIS software made by ESRI. The club hired local arborist Kris Bechtel to identify and tag each tree on the course with the help of Dinelli’s assistant superintendent, Chris Bordeleau, a four-year GCSAA member.
Nearly 2,100 trees were found, with ash trees comprising 10 percent. During the winter, Bordeleau fed detailed data on each tree into the software, classifying species, health and size, with exact location. Ash trees were color-coded in red for easy identification. In addition, he entered information about other impervious material on the property, such as tennis courts, parking lots and buildings.
“It’s really slick,” Bordeleau says. “The software can even factor in windows and air-conditioners as part of (its) energy calculations.”
Besides graphically showing how the loss of ash trees would affect the golf course, the main section of the CityGreen analysis offered a glimpse of the ecological and economic benefits provided by North Shore’s trees.
In the report, for example, Dinelli learned that his mix of 97 species of trees removes 12,700 pounds of carbon and 1,172 pounds of ozone from the atmosphere, and saves the municipality from having to treat an estimated 19,264 cubic feet of stormwater runoff each year. Looked at in another way, if North Shore were developed with paved roads, industry and residential buildings, the environmental value of green space is lost and replaced with the environmental expense of additional runoff, energy use and pollution, exceeding the estimated $31,888 annual value.
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The No. 17 hole at North Shore CC exemplifies the variety of the 97 different types of tree species on the property. |
Turf’s contribution
In reality, the loss would be far greater, Dinelli says. While the CityGreen analysis does a good job of modeling the effects of trees on air quality and rainwater, it ignores turfgrass, which covers 93 percent of North Shore’s property. Furthermore, it neglects a myriad of other contributions that golf courses make in urban settings, such as the ambient cooling effect, sound buffering, soil and rainwater conservation and wildlife habitat. Dinelli says he hopes that the golf industry will get involved and help expand models that accurately reflect the golf course situation, particularly the benefits of healthy turf.
“This is extremely important because environmentalists or people will argue, ‘Why waste resources when you can just let your turf go dormant?’ But when turf is healthy and actively growing, the cooling effect continues, the absorption of pollutants continues and the biofiltering of water continues,” Dinelli says. “When plants go dormant, or worse yet, die, most of the environmental benefits are compromised…There’s plenty of existing research that we can model with very specific values for turf’s contributions.
“Knowing that, it would be beneficial to have a balance sheet to better understand the options of inputs required to maintain turfgrass function versus allowing turf to go dormant, with the total environmental impacts of each.”
Hoping to generate interest in a turf model as well as garner support for his environmental balance sheet concept in general, Dinelli presented his pilot work on the CityGreen project at GCSAA’s Environmental Programs Committee meeting in May 2007. While he says many superintendents came away from the meeting impressed, he acknowledges that competing priorities will likely limit the adoption of the program in the near future.
Cost is an issue as well. The project requires an orthorectified aerial photograph of the course, GIS software, GPS mapping tools, a tree inventory and hours of data entry. In North Shore’s case, Dinelli estimates that the project cost roughly $6,000, an expense that was already being made to collect data at the club. For courses with fewer or no trees, the cost would be less, he says.
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Over the winter, Chris Bordeleau, the assistant superintendent at North Shore CC, collected detailed data on each tree on the property and fed it into the CityGreen software program, which classified species, health, size and exact location. Ash trees, susceptible to Chinese beetle, were color-coded in red for easy identification. |
A public relations tool
Still, Dinelli says he hopes that other golf courses will eventually recognize not only the practical advantages the program provides in terms of managing the landscape, but also the public relations leverage it offers. This is especially critical in light of the public’s increasing environmental sensitivity surrounding climate change. He envisions the environmental balance sheet as a model educators can use to teach practical science, math and technology in schools. Students would ultimately learn first-hand the value of green space and golf’s role in the environment.
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A formal study conducted by Chris Williamson, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin, is happening at North Shore CC to treat ash trees in order to prevent the emerald ash borer. The study involves several different application methods as well as different plant protectant chemistries and additives. |
“Collectively, when golf is scrutinized or comes under pressure for whatever reason, it gives us the ability to come back with a true value of what these greenscapes offer to the environment and the local community,” Dinelli says. “If you combine that with the financial model of what a golf course could bring to a community, then collectively golf courses could be looked at much more favorably beyond just offering a platform to play golf on.”
Soon after Dinelli gave his talk to the GCSAA committee, North Shore hosted a site visit from a group of environmentalists with the Village of Glenview’s Natural Resources Commission as part of an ecological assessment.
Robyn Flakne, the village’s natural resources manager, admits that before arriving at North Shore, she harbored “a certain environmentalist’s perspective of having skepticism about golf courses.” But meeting Dinelli and touring the course with the commission chairman and two hired consultants changed her mind.
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Dan Dinelli, CGCS at North Shore CC, discovered CityGreen software while researching ways to prevent emerald ash borer from infesting the area. The software allowed the club to measure the value of the golf property to the community outside of Chicago. |
“It was an eye-opener for us,” Flakne says. “On the one hand, (Dinelli) provides a good golfing experience for everyone, but he’s got so many great ideas on improving habitat in areas where it’s possible and a good fit. We were so pleased. As you know, golf courses don’t have a good reputation on environmental issues.”
Flakne was particularly impressed with Dinelli’s tree care and watched him use the CityGreen software to pull up a map showing the location of the club’s ash trees. Afterward, she forwarded Dinelli’s maps, analysis report and other information about the program to the village’s forestry department. The village joined a GIS consortium in the spring, she says, and may find the software tool useful.
“Joining the GIS consortium is a step in the right direction of saying that we want help with these kinds of mapping challenges that we have.” Flakne said. “Step No. 1 in managing any resource is just knowing what you have, where your plants are and what condition they’re in, and by using these software programs …, (Dinelli’s) already leading the way for us.”
Dinelli is only too happy to show the way, and often gives tours of the North Shore facility to enlighten local officials and the public about the value of the property in the community.
“My experience has been, if you can get the skeptics out on the course and demonstrate first hand the environmental practices and benefits, reasonable people will realize the value, especially when compared to other land use options,” he says.
Meanwhile, conservation group American Forests, maker of the software, is surprised to see a well-heeled country club successfully adapting its program for use on a golf course. According to the group, North Shore is the first golf course to use the software or even show an interest in it.
“I think it’s an interesting application of it, that’s for sure,” says Michael Lehman, IT director at American Forests. “It’s a good application because I think golf courses get a bad rap all the time. From what I hear from ‘the World,’ is that golf courses use too (many) pesticides and fertilizers to keep the grass green, so using this program is a way to turn around and say, ‘But golf courses clean the air and reduce carbon and everything else.’”
Which is exactly what Dinelli hopes it will do.
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