Using benchmarking techniques for water use management in golf courses across Southeast Spain

Abstract

Golf courses are a prime example of sport and leisure facilities with a huge thirst for water resources. In arid and semi-arid regions such as southeast Spain, efficient use of water is a priority for ensuring good management of these regions’ scare water supplies. Although in Spain the total land area set aside for golf courses is relatively low, these facilities place a great strain on water supplies because of the need for intensive watering of the playing surface. The volume of water allocated to this use often exceeds that employed for agricultural purposes, bringing under scrutiny these facilities’ significant environmental impact. Faced with a balancing act between the large demand on water resources and limited water availability—with the environmental issues this brings to the fore—, stakeholders are forced to consider the need to control water use and promote the efficiency of the facilities that use these water resources, while minimising environmental impact. This applies in equal measure to agricultural uses such as irrigation for crops, and, in the case of the present study, golf courses, due to the watering and sprinkler systems that maintain the quality of their turf. Benchmarking, by employing management indicators, is a suitable tool to determine the efficiency of these facilities. With this in mind, in 2001 the International Programme for Technology and Research in Irrigation and Drainage (IPTRID) defined a set of indicators to apply benchmarking techniques to the regulation of irrigation and drainage in agriculture. The current study applies benchmarking techniques to golf courses, which, despite their non-agricultural nature, have a high economic impact owing to the large income they generate from golf-related tourism. Golf courses are placing a great demand on the water supply of a region where this resource is scarce; namely, the province of Alicante in southeast Spain. In this study, we apply these techniques to four golf courses in Alicante, with the aim of assessing their efficiency and productivity. To accomplish this main objective, we address the following three specific aims. 1) To adapt techniques and define a set of management indicators to assess water use and its productivity in golf courses, taking the indicators set out by IPTRID and previous research as a basis. 2) To characterise and analyse the situation between 2010 and 2012 in four golf courses with similar features in Alicante (Spain). 3) To compare and assess the water use management and productivity of these four golf courses, according to their performance in terms of water use efficiency, identifying possible corrective measures where necessary. The results show that golf courses’ water use productivity is greater than productivity in agricultural settings, as is, largely, their demand for water; a demand that is partially unmet in all the golf courses that feature in the study. Overall, water use efficiency is adequate, although there is room for improvement in one of the courses.