Turfgrass research focuses on irrigation efficiency, drought tolerance.
Researchers in the New Mexico State University College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences are determining methods to improve irrigation efficiency.
NMSU Extension Turfgrass Specialist Bernd Leinauer said subsurface drip irrigation, in particular, is the newest method in turfgrass efficiency.
"Although subsurface drip irrigation has been used in agriculture for decades, it’s just making its way into the turfgrass industry," Leinauer said.
Last summer, Leinauer and his research team led a project to install a subsurface drip irrigation system in several tee boxes at The Club at Las Campanas in Santa Fe.
The project is a collaboration among NMSU, Las Campanas, United States Golf Association and irrigation manufacturers Toro and Rain Bird.
While half of the park will use a traditional pop-up sprinkler watering system, NMSU will oversee the other half of the park, on which a subsurface drip irrigation system has been installed.
For the funding agencies that have supported our research in water conservation, it is particularly important to document that technology not only works in a research setting but can be successfully scaled up to real world situations."
In the next three to five years, NMSU researchers and City of Albuquerque officials should find out if the subsurface drip irrigation system helped conserve water.
We can work closely with each other and design projects together.

What satellites can tell us about how animals will fare in a changing climate.
The presenters discussed how changes in Arctic sea ice cover have helped scientists predict a 30 percent drop in the global population of polar bears over the next 35 years.
"When we look forward several decades, climate models predict such profound loss of Arctic sea ice that there’s little doubt this will negatively affect polar bears throughout much of their range, because of their critical dependence on sea ice," said Kristin Laidre, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center in Seattle and co-author of a study on projections of the global polar bear population.
He found that there is a very strong relationship between plant productivity and deer and mountain lion density.
For mountain lions, it’s even worse," Stoner said.
Using maps of vegetation productivity during a severe drought that occurred in the southwestern United States in 2002, Stoner modeled what would be the deer and mountain lion distribution and abundance, should extreme drought become the norm.
"Using measurements of vegetation stressed by drought, our model predicted a 22 percent decrease in deer density.
For mountain lions, the decline was 43 percent.
Petrov examined historical data going back to 1969 and determined that there are ongoing changes in the distribution and migration patterns of the wild reindeer due to climate change and human pressure.
"Taimyr reindeer now have to travel longer distances between their winter and summer grounds, and this is causing a higher calf mortality," Petrov said.

As part of an effort to develop drought-resistant food and bioenergy crops, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have uncovered the genetic and metabolic mechanisms that allow certain plants to conserve water and thrive in semi-arid climates.
Semi-arid plants such as agave have adapted to survive in areas with little rainfall by developing a specialized mode of photosynthesis called crassulacean acid metabolism, or CAM.
ORNL scientists are studying the unique metabolic mechanisms that allow CAM plants to conserve water, with the goal of introducing water-saving traits into bioenergy and food crops.
The results of the team’s latest study, which focuses on agave, are published in Nature Plants.
To gain a comprehensive view of the complex CAM system, the team used ORNL’s mass spectrometry to compare the molecular traits of agave with a control plant, Arabidopsis, which uses a more common photosynthetic process.
Their study revealed that the timing of daytime versus nighttime stomatal activity varied significantly between agave and Arabidopsis.
The research also pinpointed which genetic and metabolic mechanisms signal CAM plants to open and close their stomata.
Understanding the timing of these signals will be key to transferring CAM processes into crops such as rice, corn, poplar and switchgrass.
"The transfer of CAM molecular machinery into energy crops would facilitate their deployment onto marginal lands and would simultaneously reduce competition with food crops."
Journal Reference: Paul E. Abraham, Hengfu Yin, Anne M. Borland, Deborah Weighill, Sung Don Lim, Henrique Cestari De Paoli, Nancy Engle, Piet C. Jones, Ryan Agh, David J. Weston, Stan D. Wullschleger, Timothy Tschaplinski, Daniel Jacobson, John C. Cushman, Robert L. Hettich, Gerald A. Tuskan, Xiaohan Yang.

Soybean plants with fewer leaves yield more.
They attribute this boost in yield to increased photosynthesis, decreased respiration, and diversion of resources that would have been invested in more leaves than seeds.
"This rate is insufficient to fulfill the needs for global food security, where we need to produce 70-100 percent more food by 2050 to feed an estimated 9.7 billion people," said project co-lead Steve Long, Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.
If we can increase the yield of soybeans, we can solve the problems of protein demand and food production at the same time."
Published in Global Change Biology, their paper found that soybean plants produce too many leaves, most of which are shaded and inefficient, thereby wasting resources like water, carbon and nitrogen.
"The model shows that by investing less in leaves, the plant can produce more seeds," Srinivasan said.
The model predicted that a 30-40 percent decrease in leaf area would increase yields by 8-10 percent in field trials, they decreased leaf area (by manually cutting off new leaflets) by just 5 percent and still increased yields by 8 percent.
"We hypothesize that plants with fewer leaves need less water, which requires fewer roots.
Journal Reference: Venkatraman Srinivasan, Praveen Kumar, Stephen P. Long.
Decreasing, not increasing, leaf area will raise crop yields under global atmospheric change.

Looming crisis of the much decreased fresh-water supply to Egypt’s Nile delta.
A multi-year study of Egypt’s Nile Delta places the country’s major breadbasket at serious risk.
The soil-rich delta evolved as the result of natural conditions involving the Nile’s fresh water flow and transport of sediment northward from Ethiopia, across the Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean.
About 70% of water flow reaching Egypt is derived from the Blue Nile and Atbara River, both sourced in Ethiopia.
Over the past 200 years, rapidly increasing human activity has seriously altered flow conditions of the Nile.
Emplacement in Egypt of barrages in the 1800s, construction the Aswan Low Dam in 1902, and the Aswan High Dam in 1965 has since altered water flow and distribution of nourishing organic-rich soil in the delta.
Egypt’s population has recently swelled rapidly to about 90 million, with most living in the soil-rich Lower Nile Valley and Delta.
The low-lying delta plain is only about 1 m above present sea level.
While the coastal delta margin is being lowered, sea level is also rising at a rate of about 3 mm per year.
This down-river decrease of Nile fresh water will produce grave conditions.

DAILY DIGEST, weekend edition: Measuring the snowpack goes high-tech with airborne lasers and radar; Budget moves forward with some spending on water projects; Yuba County Water Agency in final stretch of relicensing; and more ….
In California water news this weekend, Illegal pot grows: Dangerous for species, agencies, and recreationists; Measuring the snowpack goes high-tech with airborne lasers and radar; Budget moves forward with some spending on water projects; AquAlliance files lawsuit to prompt DWR to release asbestos details; State adopts fee schedule under groundwater act; Column: James Gallagher keeps pressure on Oroville saga; Santa Rosa: New oversight on groundwater; Yuba County Water Agency in final stretch of relicensing; Lake Tahoe authorities crack down on illegal fences running into the water; Stockton: One last hope for ‘dying slough’?
; Tioga Pass Resort damaged by record snowpack; closed until further notice; and San Diego: Otay Water District sues City of San Diego for overcharges In the news this weekend … Measuring the snowpack goes high-tech with airborne lasers and radar: “Every year for almost half a century, California snow surveyor Pat Armstrong has trekked the rugged Sierra Nevada with three simple tools: a snow core tube, a scale and a notebook.
… ” Read more from the Courthouse News here: Illegal pot grows: Dangerous for species, agencies, and recreationists AquAlliance files lawsuit to prompt DWR to release asbestos details: “Was there more that the public doesn’t know about the discussion of asbestos at the work site for the Oroville Dam spillway?
The group previously asked for all documents related to the topic, and has filed a followup lawsuit against the Department of Water Resources asking to receive more information the group believes exists.
… ” Read more from the Chico Enterprise-Record here: AquAlliance files lawsuit to prompt DWR to release asbestos details State adopts fee schedule under groundwater act: “The State Water Resources Control Board adopted a new fee schedule that will be applied to groundwater pumpers in basins where compliance with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act comes up short.
Dave Levy, the resort’s general manager, blames the huge snow year.
Otay is seeking damages in excess of $16 million of overcharges from the City.
Sign up for daily email service and you’ll never miss a post!
Maven’s Notebook where California water news never goes home for the weekend

Bobby Bradley has driven at least five runs in a game seven times in four Minor League seasons.
"Is Bobby on time?
Narron said.
2 prospect Sean Reid-Foley over the fence in right-center field for the sixth grand slam of his Minor League career.
It was the fifth two-homer game of Bradley’s Minor League career and first with Akron.
"In his third at-bat, he hit a line drive to center field.
"So, he had three good at-bats going into his fourth at-bat and then he hit that home run.
Overall, I feel he was in a good place with his timing, his swing sequence was good and he hit the ball well in all four of his at-bats."
Before Saturday, Bradley had hit one home run in his last 19 games.
RubberDucks starter Matt Whitehouse (2-3) gave up three runs on seven hits with four strikeouts and a walk over six innings.

US Drought Monitor: Parched conditions expand across Dakotas.
About 87 percent of North Dakota is in drought, while just more than half of South Dakota is experiencing drought conditions, according to updated monitoring information released Thursday.
The parched conditions have expanded and deteriorated compared to last week, and roughly 700,000 people across both states are living in drought areas.
There have also been significant winter wheat losses in central South Dakota, she said, adding that she doesn’t anticipate conditions will improve in the near term.
“The drought’s pretty bad, I’d say, especially in the agricultural sector, which is often where we see the first impacts,” Edwards said.
Selling calves now that would get a good price this fall means producers will likely take a hit on the animals’ value, said Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association.
“We’ve seen that over the last few years.
But I think we can’t discount the toll that this kind of a drought takes on our agriculture community and what it’s going to do to a lot of our neighbors and friends here across the state this year, if this drought doesn’t break.” Terry Beastrom, who farms mostly in Stanley county in South Dakota, said he’s leaning toward destroying nearly all of his wheat and hopes to turn most of it into cattle feed.
In North Dakota, drought conditions have the potential to cause future feed shortages, said Scott Ressler, environmental services director for the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association, which represents the cattle industry.
Producers are selling older cattle because, without precipitation, some pastures aren’t going to be able to support as many animals as they normally do, he said.

Kentucky All-Stars snap drought, beat Indiana in girls All-Star game.
The Kentucky All-Stars defeated Indiana’s All-Stars, 75-67 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
"In the second half we shot lights out, around 60 percent and defensively we were more active, we took away shots and they didn’t get as many transition baskets.
We hit some big threes down the stretch too."
More: New Albany’s Chyna Anthony shines on all-star stage More: Here’s your 2017 Kentucky Boys and Girls All-Star teams More: Kentucky all-stars look to end losing streak against Indiana all-stars “She’s real tough," Just said of Evans.
"She is so good at getting into the lane and getting that penetration, she’s hard to keep in front of, she can make shots and (pass) and find teammates."
Penn’s former high school teammate Tasia Jeffries tallied 12 points, all on 3-pointers, to go with three rebounds and two assists while Breia Torrens scored three points and grabbed four rebounds.
Former Manual guard Tonysha Curry scored two points and had four rebounds and former Trimble County guard Kaylee Clifford scored 10 points with two 3-pointers and four rebounds.
New Albany’s Chyna Anthony struggled with her shooting, missing all seven shots she took and finishing with one made free throw, though she did grab nine rebounds.
The two teams continue their series Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Frankfort Convention Center in Frankfort.

The NYC high schooler who can end city’s strange draft drought.
The last time a New York City high school baseball prospect was drafted in the first round, the Yankees’ Core Four dynasty was just beginning, the Knicks mattered in the spring, and the Rangers were two years removed from a Stanley Cup title.
“I am a little bit surprised it hasn’t been done since,” said Jason Marquis, the last player from the city to be taken in the first round, back in 1996, 35th overall by the Braves out of Tottenville High School on Staten Island.
There is a chance the list grows this year.
33 prospect in the draft.
In two of Baseball America’s past three mock drafts, he was picked in the first round.
“There’s no time for a bad game here, a bad game there,” said Marquis, who last pitched for the Reds in 2015, but hasn’t retired officially.
One local scout, speaking on condition of anonymity, thinks it comes down to teams not willing to take risks early in the draft.
Northeast high school players often are not as finely tuned products because they have spent less time on the field by the end of their senior year.
Marquis is rooting for Holmes.