TY - JOUR
T1 - Motivations and barriers to integrated management of annual bluegrass in sports fields
T2 - US survey findings
AU - Ervin, David E.
AU - Frisvold, George B.
AU - Allen, Jennifer H.
AU - Patton, Aaron J.
AU - Brosnan, James T.
AU - Bowling, Rebecca Grubbs
AU - Elmore, Mathew T.
AU - Bagavathiannan, Muthukumar V.
AU - McCurdy, James D.
AU - Gannon, Travis W.
AU - Kaminski, John E.
AU - Kowaleski, Alec R.
AU - McElroy, J. Scott
AU - McCullough, Patrick
AU - Unruh, Bryan
AU - Askew, Shawn
AU - McCarty, Lambert
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 Elsevier GmbH
PY - 2025/10
Y1 - 2025/10
N2 - Maintaining turfgrass quality is key to deriving ecological, social, and cultural ecosystem services from urban sports fields. Annual bluegrass, the most troublesome weed in U.S. turfgrass systems and a problematic weed in Australasia and Europe, poses serious risks to sustaining these services. Recent U.S. focus groups have documented turfgrass professionals’ concerns about annual bluegrass, particularly the evolution of herbicide resistance and opportunities for improved management. However, comprehensive scientific data have been lacking to test the scale and depth of the concerns and identify significant factors affecting turfgrass manager decisions to adopt remedies. The purpose of this study is to help fill those gaps in scientific knowledge with findings from the first national survey of U.S. sports and recreation turfgrass professionals. Integrated weed management (IWM), a holistic weed management approach that blends chemical and non-chemical practices, is key to slowing the evolution of herbicide resistance, but it meets stiff challenges in practical application. A multivariate regression model tested for factors hypothesized to affect the count of diverse practices used by U.S. sports turfgrass managers. Significant positive influences on practice adoption include the number of employees in a sports field operation, degree of concern about herbicide resistance, Extension educational program attendance, and length of tenure in the sports sector. Insufficient time, a perceived lack of non-chemical options, and a higher education level decrease the total count of practices. The findings support three actions to advance IWM for sports turfgrass: (1) credible and consistent information programs on herbicide resistance risks; (2) development of more non-chemical practices and new herbicide MOAs, and (3) public/private transdisciplinary collaborations to integrate the experiential knowledge of turfgrass professionals with frontier science.
AB - Maintaining turfgrass quality is key to deriving ecological, social, and cultural ecosystem services from urban sports fields. Annual bluegrass, the most troublesome weed in U.S. turfgrass systems and a problematic weed in Australasia and Europe, poses serious risks to sustaining these services. Recent U.S. focus groups have documented turfgrass professionals’ concerns about annual bluegrass, particularly the evolution of herbicide resistance and opportunities for improved management. However, comprehensive scientific data have been lacking to test the scale and depth of the concerns and identify significant factors affecting turfgrass manager decisions to adopt remedies. The purpose of this study is to help fill those gaps in scientific knowledge with findings from the first national survey of U.S. sports and recreation turfgrass professionals. Integrated weed management (IWM), a holistic weed management approach that blends chemical and non-chemical practices, is key to slowing the evolution of herbicide resistance, but it meets stiff challenges in practical application. A multivariate regression model tested for factors hypothesized to affect the count of diverse practices used by U.S. sports turfgrass managers. Significant positive influences on practice adoption include the number of employees in a sports field operation, degree of concern about herbicide resistance, Extension educational program attendance, and length of tenure in the sports sector. Insufficient time, a perceived lack of non-chemical options, and a higher education level decrease the total count of practices. The findings support three actions to advance IWM for sports turfgrass: (1) credible and consistent information programs on herbicide resistance risks; (2) development of more non-chemical practices and new herbicide MOAs, and (3) public/private transdisciplinary collaborations to integrate the experiential knowledge of turfgrass professionals with frontier science.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105006663796
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=105006663796&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ufug.2025.128877
DO - 10.1016/j.ufug.2025.128877
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105006663796
SN - 1618-8667
VL - 112
JO - Urban Forestry and Urban Greening
JF - Urban Forestry and Urban Greening
M1 - 128877
ER -