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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Soil and Water Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #243970
Title: Golf Turf Pesticide Runoff Losses from Four Regional Sites

Author
item MARK, CARROLL - University Of Maryland
item MASSEY, JOE - Mississippi State University
item Rice, Pamela
item BELL, GREG - Oklahoma State University
item NETT, MARY - Water Quality Counseling

Submitted to: American Chemical Society Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/20/2008
Publication Date: 8/15/2009
Citation: Mark, C., Massey, J., Rice, P.J., Bell, G., Nett, M. 2009. Golf Turf Pesticide Runoff Losses from Four Regional Sites [abstract]. American Chemical Society. 77:133.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Efforts to validate runoff models for use on turf have been hampered by the availability of comprehensive regional data sets that can be used to demonstrate the wide spread applicability of the model validation effort. A multi state collaborative project was initiated to generate regional data sets that could be used to overcome this limitation. A common research protocol was used to evaluate pesticide runoff from fairway managed golf turf plots located in Mississippi, Maryland, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. The runoff of 2,4-D, flutolanil and chlorpyrifos was examined at the four sites under realistic worst-case soil moisture and simulation rainfall conditions. No one site was identified as having consistently different pesticide concentrations than any other site for all three of the pesticides that were examined. When losses were normalized to runoff amount and expressed as a percent of the amount of pesticide applied chlorpyrifos and 2,4-D runoff losses were site dependent while flutolanil losses were invariant of site location. Our results suggest that runoff losses of high-load rate pesticides applied to turf may be less sensitive to site conditions than are low-load rate pesticides. The results also emphasize the need to examine several pesticides when evaluating the ability of a model to accurately assess pesticide runoff from turf.