Monday, November 5, 2007 - 3:50 PM
43-8

Best Turfgrass Management Practice in the Susquehanna River Basin: A Grassroots Movement.

Maxim J. Schlossberg, Penn State University, Dept. Crop & Soil Sciences, 116 ASI, University Park, PA 16802-3504

The Susquehanna River basin, historically recognized as a hub of agricultural enterprise, is more recently known for its record housing starts. This seemingly irreversible trend transforms farmlands to subdivisions at a rate of acres per day. Current PA regulations prohibit new nutrient loading point sources, making stormwater control and treatment structures required components of land development planning. Consequently, immediate reductions in non-point nutrient loading of the Susquehanna may comprise a final opportunity to prevent EPA-imposed total maximum daily load (TMDL) regulations. Considering managed turfgrass may be the most rapidly-expanding land cover in the basin, these pending regulatory measures have promoted both environmental stewardship and improved fertilizer use efficiency (FUE) practices to the forefront of instruction, research, and outreach programs employed within our region. Additionally, ongoing development and transfer of best turfgrass management practices must continue to prevent surface water loading by sediment transport from managed turfgrass systems. Recent developments in turfgrass fertilizer/nutrient use efficiency enhancement, emphasizing reduction of N and P fertilizer applications, include vegetative growth regulation, iron fertilization to supplant traditional N application rates, cost/benefit analysis of fertilizer application frequency, and technological advancements in slow-release fertilizer formulations and turfgrass establishment methodologies. The potential for increasing nitrogen FUE using real-time multispectral radiometry-coupled variable-rate application technologies, as well as meeting the end user’s ever-increasing expectation of turfgrass utility through employment of low-maintenance species and/or cultivars will be discussed.

Back to Symposium--Agriculture, Rivers, and Coasts: II. The Susquehanna/Div. A05 Business Meeting
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Back to The ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meetings (November 4-8, 2007)