Nick Christians, Iowa State University, Ames, IA and Zachary A. Simons, Horticulture, Iowa State University, Ames, IA
The increased emphasis on reducing water
usage in the turf industry has increased the need for site-specific management.
Precision Sense 6000 (PS 6000), a product of the Toro Co. in Minneapolis, MN,
can provide site-specific soil information in turfgrass areas such as golf
courses and sports fields on volumetric water content, soil salinity, soil
compaction. It also provides an estimate
of turf vigor by measuring reflected energy from the turf canopy. The PS 6000 is also capable of doing an
irrigation audit, showing the distribution of water from the irrigation
system. These evaluations are performed
in dryer conditions following irrigation. A GPS system is used on the PS 6000 to give
the specific latitude-longitude coordinates where data was collected. Once the
data is collected and processed the results are displayed in Google Earth,
which allows the operator to zoom in on a specific location on the site.
Multiple layers can be displayed on Google Earth to allow for a comparison of turf
vigor, compaction and soil moisture. The
increased focus on head injuries related to athletics has also led to the
development of a mobile accelerometer to measure surface hardness of athletic
fields by dropping a 2.25 kg hammer a known distance to the surface. It is designed for use on both synthetic and
natural grass athletic fields. To compare the measurements from the two
machines, both machines were used on six natural grass soccer fields. All the fields were irrigated. Three fields were native soil while the other
three were sand-based. The objective of
the research was to determine if the soil moisture and soil compaction
measurements taken from the PS 6000 have a relationship to the surface hardness
measurements taken by the mobile accelerometer.