1. gem e x t r a
Calculating
the value of
green
A Chicago-area
superintendent uses
technology to measure
environmental benefits
in dollars.
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.
Bill Steele
Despite their obvious ecological attributes, golf courses re-
main a hard sell among today's non-golfing public when it comes to
their environmental benefits. While superintendents have made sig-
nificant 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, 111., recently completed a report that quantifies the club's eco-
logical and economic value in terms of a number of environmental metrics,
including air pollution removal, stormwater runoff and carbon sequestration.
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2. gem e x t r a
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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.
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 com-
putes 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 num-
ber 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."
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 Inter-
net one evening, he stumbled upon CityGreen.
The discovery was timely. Over the past several years,
North Shore, a fully certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctu-
ary since 1998, has GPS-mapped new irrigation, drainage, to-
pography, 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 as-
sistant 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 ten-
nis 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 anal-
ysis 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
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3. gem extra
The No. 17 hole at North Shore CC exemplifies the variety of the 97 dif-
ferent types of tree species on the property.
residential buildings, the environmental value of green space
is lost and replaced with the environmental expense of addi-
tional runoff, energy use and pollution, exceeding the esti-
mated $31,888 annual value.
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 in-
volved 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 pol-
lutants continues and the biofiltering of water continues," Di-
nelli 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 dor-
mant, with the total environmental impacts of each."
Hoping to generate interest in a turf model as well as gar-
ner support for his environmental balance sheet
concept in general, Dinelli presented his pilot
work on the CityGreen project at GCSAA's En-
vironmental Programs Committee meeting in
May 2007. While he says many superintendents
came away from the meeting impressed, he ac-
knowledges that competing priorities will likely
limit the adoption of the program in the near
future.
Cost is an issue as well. The project re-
quires 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 al-
ready being made to collect data at the club. For
courses with fewer or no trees, the cost would be
less, he says.
A public relations tool
Still, Dinelli says he hopes that other golf
courses will eventually recognize not only the practical advan-
tages the program provides in terms of managing the land-
scape, but also the public relations leverage it offers. This is
especially critical in light of the public's increasing environ-
mental 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.
"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 environmental-
ists with the Village of Glenview's Natural Resources Com-
mission as part of an ecological assessment.
Robyn Flakne, the village's natural resources manager, ad-
mits that before arriving at North Shore, she harbored "a cer-
tain 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.
"It was an eye-opener for us," Flakne says. "On the one
hand, (Dinelli) provides a good golfing experience for every-
one, 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 envi-
ronmental issues."
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Above: 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.
Right top: 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.
Right bottom: 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.
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 in-
formation about the program to the village's forestry depart-
ment. 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 chal-
lenges 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 environmen-
tal 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. Ac-
cording 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.
Bill Steele is a Lawrence, Kan.-based freelance writer and regular contributor
to GCM.
100 GCM February 2008