Effects of different scenarios on water consumption by golf courses

Abstract

As golf tourism has been a growth market in the last years with an increasing economic relevance and as golf courses have a high water demand, they are considered in the Tourism model as an actor class. This chapter focuses on their water consumption under different scenarios. In the model, the water demand of a golf course is determined by its area size, the number of fairways, the capacity of the reservoir and the regional climate, especially the precipitation amount during summer and local climatic peculiarities. According to the chosen societal scenario, golf courses find different preconditions concerning, e.g. the permission to irrigate artificially and the irrigation intervals. With four simulation runs, which vary by climate variant (baseline vs. five hot summers) and societal scenario (performance vs. public welfare), a corridor of golf courses’ potential future water demand is spanned. The results show that the water demand depends mainly on the chosen societal scenario; the climate variant has nearly no influence. Action is required by golf course operators as in each simulation run, temperature increases while precipitation decreases during summer. Then, possible options for action are to use types of grass with an augmented drought resistance or to establish shorter lawn cuttings.