We’ve had more than enough rain to keep sports fields green this spring, but parks departments around southern Ontario know their luck will change at some point.

It’s in the hot, dry summer months that municipalities around the Golden Horseshoe have to decide if keeping grass athletic fields lush and green is worth the water it takes to make that happen.

A Brock University researcher says this is among several issues parks and recreation departments grapple with as they figure out how to deal with the impacts of climate change.

“One of the key questions that came out of this research was, do you water the sports fields during times of intense drought? Is that where the water should go?” says researcher Cheryl Mallen, Associate Professor in the Department of Sport Management.

In a recently published study, “Climate Change and Canadian Community Grass-Based Sport Fields,” Mallen and her team interviewed directors, managers and maintenance staff within departments dealing with recreation, open spaces, community facilities and other aspects of park management.

There were 16 municipalities stretching from Toronto to Niagara Falls represented in the study.

The research team asked participants a series of questions centring on awareness of climate change impacts and strategies to address the impacts.

Participants were generally concerned with widely varying seasonal conditions such as winters that are extremely cold or mild, and they considered summer as a major concern with either lots of rain, drought conditions or a combination of the two.

Respondents also pointed to the presence of new pests and molds brought about by warmer temperatures and unusual precipitation patterns as troubling new trends.

Topping the list of how to deal with climate change was the question of whether or not to water fields during dry times.

“I found a real polarization,” says Mallen. “Some groups indicated that they are watering the fields to the extent that they can keep those fields beautifully green, so that the players totally enjoy playing sports on these lush fields.

“On the other hand, you have sports fields managers who are saying, ‘our people have already adjusted; they know that the grass is going to be browner. They are adapting mentally that this is what you play on and it’s OK and you can still have a good game of soccer.’”

At issue is the cost of watering fields.

“The debate is: Do you want your taxes to go up to have green grass on sport fields?” says Mallen. “Some municipalities are saying, ‘we’re trying to be very responsible with our money and stay within our budgets,’ and other areas have more money, so within their budgets they have more to water their fields.”

The payoff for green fields, says Mallen, is that they attract sporting events, resulting in more direct and indirect revenues for the surrounding communities.

Mallen is also working on a comparative study with sport management researcher Greg Dingle at La Trobe University in Australia, a country that has been battling droughts for more than a decade.

There, participants report being uplifted by watered fields, saying that green sport fields bring about positive feelings in people and bind communities together.

Mallen’s research uncovered a number of innovative measures municipalities are implementing to keep their fields as green and healthy as possible for dry times. These include:

• Protecting sensitive sections of field such as goals and centre field by planting seed, surrounding them with hay bales and then keeping the areas covered during the winter using tarps
• Carefully selecting the combination of grass seed varieties designed to handle a wide range of weather conditions
• Using new techniques to aerate sport field soil
• Shifting goals and centre fields around from year to year to avoid burning out these heavily travelled areas

“Climate Change and Canadian Community Grass-Based Sport Fields” was published May 12 in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability.