Golf courses require an enormous amount of water every day and, as with other causes of excessive extraction of water, this can result in water scarcity. If the water comes from wells, over-extraction can cause saline intrusion into groundwater. Golf resorts are more and more often situated in or near protected areas...
What many people overlook is the effect it is having on the coastal ecosystems. In fact, this is one human activity that does not only harm the coasts; it has a few good effects as well. Let’s take a look at that in this post. There is a complex relationship between the tourism industry and the environment it affects, irrespective of the setting.
Because coastal ecosystems are such potent "carbon sinks," the loss of these habitats is an important driver of climate change. Intact, these coastal habitats are actually one of our best ways to protect coastal communities from climate change. During hurricanes and other storms, high winds can push walls of water toward shore.
By far the biggest and most documented issue with coastal developments is the damage to coral reefs. Coral reefs are ridges of rock in the sea created by growing coral. Corals are invertebrates that give out calcium carbonate as a waste product, and it's that calcium carbonate that forms the skeleton for the reef.
Courses dump often unregulated fertilisers and pesticides on their greenways to keep the grass looking unnaturally green. The fertilisers run off into bodies of water, causing a state of nutrient over-enrichment called eutrophication which results in algal blooms that destroy ecosystems.
Environmentalists argue that golf course land is not only a waste of space, but also harbors harmful impacts to the earth and environment, such as pesticide use. This negative impact occurs by using large quantities of water and destroying habitats for wildlife species.
But golf courses also have great opportunities to make a positive impact. They can provide wildlife sanctuaries, preserve natural areas in urban environments, support native plants and wildlife, protect water resources, rehabilitate degraded landscapes and promote environmentally-positive management to the public.
Golf courses offer numerous opportunities to not only provide pleasant places to play, but also to protect drinking water, improve the water quality of on-site and surrounding lakes, streams, and rivers, support a variety of plants and wildlife, and protect the environment for future generations.
The average golf course uses 312 gallons of water per day for maintenance of the grounds. As this water flows through the property, it can pick up contaminants such as petroleum, pesticides, and fertilizers.
Golf courses account for more than 5.1 million acres of land worldwide. That land that could be used as wooded areas, farmland, animal habits, wetlands and countless other activities that are far more useful to society than golf. Golf courses use 13 trillion gallons of water every year.
Golf courses definitely have a positive economic impact on local economies. These impacts are demonstrated in the form of new jobs and payroll impacts. . Golf courses have a significant impact in terms of local expenditures for supplies, repairs, maintenance, etc.
In California, an average 18-hole golf course sprawls over 110 to 115 acres and conservatively uses almost 90 million gallons of water per year, enough to fill 136 Olympic-size swimming pools, said Mike Huck, a water management consultant who works with golf courses statewide.
The worst sports for the environment include skydiving (massive relative carbon footprint), golf (water consumption and chemicals needed), auto-racing and other motor-vehicle sports (absolute carbon emissions), and motorized water-sports (fuel consumption and biosphere interruption).
Advances in Environmentally-Friendly Golf Course Design Many are aiming to significantly reduce water wastage by: Using technology to pinpoint water usage and minimize water wasting effectively. Utilizing filtered stormwater runoff through wetlands and turf grass. Creating and implementing turf reduction programs.
Below are our best tips for creating an eco-friendly golf course.Increase the biodiversity of your golf course.Limit your use of pesticides.Source food from local providers.Reduce water usage.Invest in better waste management.
Toxic Fairways People living near a golf course may be affected by sprays and dusts blown from the golf course onto their property and into their homes. Finally, pesticides applied to the turf may run off into surface waters or leach down to groundwater, which can then expose people to contaminated drinking water.
It's all very appealing. When demand is high enough, people start to build. They clear space for larger beaches, build hotels, resorts, airports, marinas, and golf courses. Collectively, these are called coastal developments.
But it isn't just the building of things that is a problem - it's the tourists themselves. Tourists snorkel, dive, use boats, and fish. People touch, stand on and directly damage the reefs. They're often broken, or sediment is stirred up in ways that make it hard for animals to remain. Sometimes modifications to islands can change the saltiness of the water, or bring new sediments to the area, and this also upsets the balance by blocking out sunlight, which is vital to the development of coral reefs. As we speak, coral reefs are dying all over the world.
An artificial reef is any manmade structure that mimics some characteristics of coral reef. They can be built on shipwrecks, cinder blocks, limestone, or all kinds of things.
But they can also form around other structures, like bridges and oil platforms, and they can be created using rock s, cinder blocks , limestone, old tires or wood. While the only real solution to saving coral reefs is to tackle human activities - to address climate change, stop dumping things into the ocean, and to be careful with coastal developments - artificial reefs can help wildlife hold on until we do these things.
Coral reefs are under threat from many human-caused activities, including climate change and the acidification of the oceans. But their demise is being worsened and accelerated by coastal developments.
They've been described as rainforests of the sea because, like rainforests, they contain unmatched amounts of biodiversity. The variations and amounts of life found in coral reefs are staggering.
Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams.
Urban ecosystem service assessments are critical to ensuring that the value of nature becomes a standard component of urban planning and a more recognized and understood set of benefits provided by golf courses.
Ecosystem services are the benefits that humans receive from the environment, such as carbon sequestration, storm water nutrient retention, and pollination services. Ecosystem services have been modeled and assessed in broader spatial planning contexts in rural and agricultural landscapes. Until recently, they were largely ignored in urban landscapes where there are more variations in the supply of ecosystem services stemming from buildings, pavement, and particular management of open spaces. To date, a straightforward, replicable approach to quantifying multiple urban ecosystem services has yet to emerge. There has been an increasing interest in integrating ecosystem services into urban planning decisions, but their inclusion in urban planning remains limited.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota quantified the ecosystem services provided by the 135 golf courses in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
When insights from past research on application and retention rates are applied to a landscape, we find that residential areas with high homeowner inputs and impervious surfaces have higher net nutrient export than golf courses. Although golf course fertilization rates are on par with residential lawns, golf courses provide additional areas of green space mostly free from paved surfaces and potential runoff problems. In residential and other urban development, nutrient retention is generally reduced by pavement and connected elements of drainage networks e.g., streets and storm drains - which efficiently carry runoff from the landscape downstream and provide little opportunity for further retention without the aid of stormwater management practices like ponds and rain gardens. Further, leaf litter entering streets from nearby trees can contribute substantially to nutrient export by street runoff.
Our results suggest that golf courses are more supportive of pollinators than residential and industrial areas (Figure 3). While the greens, tees, fairways and rough do not provide suitable habitat for pollinators, there are often natural areas within courses that can provide good habitat. This is similar to suburban residential areas which have unsuitable habitat mixed with habitat that provides good nesting and floral quality. With more pavement and buildings, which provide no nesting or foraging habitat, our analysis suggests that urban residential developments and industrial areas reduce pollinator habitat and abundance accordingly when compared to golf courses.
In recent years golf tourism in Spain has increased in popularity and the number of golf courses has grown rapidly. These are resort destinations, and the golf courses are normally associated with substantial real estate development, hotels and related facilities.
Golf courses require an enormous amount of water every day and, as with other causes of excessive extraction of water, this can result in water scarcity. If the water comes from wells, over-extraction can cause saline intrusion into groundwater.
Biocides use to maintain the greenness of the 'greens', control insects, fungicides and weeds, contaminate both the air and water. Attracts the higher-spending social groups. Golf clubs often portray an elitist and exclusive lifestyle.
If the water comes from wells, over-extraction can cause saline intrusion into groundwater. Golf resorts are more and more often situated in or near protected areas or areas where resources are limited, exacerbating their impacts.
Because coastal ecosystems are such potent "carbon sinks," the loss of these habitats is an important driver of climate change. Intact, these coastal habitats are actually one of our best ways to protect coastal communities from climate change. During hurricanes and other storms, high winds can push walls of water toward shore.
Coastal ecosystems are the unique habitats formed by plants and other organisms that can thrive at the borders between ocean and land, where they must live in saltwater and changing tides.
Habitats under threat. While coastal wetlands are a key defense against climate change, these ecosystems are themselves vulnerable to climate change. In theory, coastal wetlands, whose plants can only survive in specific amounts of saltwater, could adapt to rising sea levels by moving inland.
Coastal ecosystems are especially good at storing carbon because of the thick, rich layers of soil they build up. In most forests, when trees die, they release their carbon back into the atmosphere. But in many coastal ecosystems, when plants die, they don’t fully break down, and their carbon can stay trapped in water-logged soils for thousands of years. In fact, mangroves store three to five times as much carbon per acre as other tropical forests. 1 Coastal wetlands can also store carbon that comes from other ecosystems, by filtering out carbon-rich sediments suspended in river water as it flows out to sea. Because coastal ecosystems are such potent "carbon sinks," the loss of these habitats is an important driver of climate change.
These meadows, which are found all the way from the tropics up to the Arctic Circle, are home to a diverse array of fish and other marine wildlife. Other coastal ecosystems, like oyster reefs and coral reefs, are formed by animals instead of plants.
In the tropics, fish farmers cut down mangrove forests for aquaculture ponds. We also harm these ecosystems by dredging deep channels for ships to navigate, and by polluting water with fertilizer, emissions from cars and buses, and other chemicals. And this further feeds climate change: when we destroy coastal ecosystems, their stored carbon gets released into the atmosphere as planet-warming carbon dioxide.
The low-lying Netherlands has started shoring up some of the salt marshes in front of its dykes, to protect this infrastructure, and its citizens, from sea level rise. Some environmental policymakers have also proposed paying coastal landowners for the carbon stored in these ecosystems to prevent their destruction.
The factors of tourism that affect coastal ecosystems are…. Transportation. The very first requirement for any tourism industry is to establish a reliable means of transportation for the tourists. It also includes transportation within the tourist spot for the tourists to move around hassle-free.
Coastal ecosystems are inherently fragile. There is a complex relationship between the tourism industry and the environment it affects, irrespective of the setting. In coastal environments, this relationship is intensified because of the complexity in the ecosystem itself. Within any coastal ecosystem, we have marine life, ...
For example, the growth of coastal tourism in the Red Sea had substantial impacts on coral reefs in terms of both the effects of construction and infrastructure development as well as the direct affects of snorkeling and diving. According to Hawkins and Roberts approximately 19% of Egypt’s reefs were substantially affected by tourism in the early 1990s, but this figure was expected to rise to over 30% by the year 2000. Egypt, in fact, had plans to expland its coastal tourism 11-fold, in the first decade of the 21st century. Imagine the damage that would have caused!
According to Hawkins and Roberts approximately 19% of Egypt’s reefs were substantially affected by tourism in the early 1990s, but this figure was expected to rise to over 30% by the year 2000. Egypt, in fact, had plans to expland its coastal tourism 11-fold, in the first decade of the 21st century.
The first and the most important benefit we have derived from coastal tourism is increased awareness . Most people have scuba diving into the reefs as a number on their bucket list. This makes them protective of the coral reefs. Last year, when reports saying the Great Barrier Reef is dead made rounds on the Internet, many people lamented on the the fact that “they will never be able to tick this off their bucket list” and “the culprits need to pay for this”.
One of the biggest modes of transportation in coastal tourism is cruise ships. In fact, research has found out that the use of cruise ships for tourist arrivals had increased by 7.7% in a period from 1990-1999. In 1990, the number of tourists arriving via cruise was 4.5 million; this jumped to 8.7 million in 1999.
Scientists have acknowledged that more than 300 acres of coral reef have already been lost to cruise ship anchors in the harbor at George Town, the capital of Grand Cayman. However, arguments in favor of cruise ships also exist. Ritter and Schafer, for example, argue that the ecological impact of cruises is low.