Page 26 - Green Master summer 2022

uFEATUREuRICHARD J. HEBDA, ADJUNCT ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
Golf Courses
Climate
At Cordova Bay Golf Club a large area of provincially rare Douglas-fir forest has been preserved intact.
Signs are everywhere that climate change is underway and is having
widespread impacts. Global surface temperatures have risen about 1.2 C degrees since pre-industrial times. The year 2020 was the warmest on record with regions of intense warming in the northern hemisphere. There continues to be a steady increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) (see https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/data.html).
The increase in extreme and destructive weather events is most striking. British Columbia had its wake-up call in 2021 with record temperatures under a heat dome, followed by catastrophic record flooding, landslides and widespread damage to infrastructure.
A look into the future through climate models and other techniques points to an intensification of climate change and its impacts. Those impacts will affect water supply, wildfire fire activity and lead to ecological transformation and food insecurity. More and more the public is concerned about adaptation to a changing future. Golf courses will need to be part of that adaption action. The public will expect the best use of land especially in urban and suburban areas. Golf course operational and land-use challenges may seem separate, but they overlap in several ways in mitigating and adapting to climate change.
GOLF COURSES OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES
Golf courses need a lot of water to maintain greens and fairways. More frequent and longer summer droughts will increase overall demand for water and many of those demands will have a higher priority than golf course maintenance. There is and will also be an expectation to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from maintenance. For specific sites, sea level rise will and already poses threats to oceanfront golf facilities. Extreme weather events such as flooding, wildfires and intense storms will impact course infrastructure and the insurance and cost of repairing
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