What empirical formula do you use for determining CEC in sandy soils with no clay particles?
Two short articles on simplifying fertilization and soil test interpretation

Which affects growth more? Light or temperature?

I think temperature has more of an influence on turf growth, and I will use some data from Iceland to show why. This concerns the situation when there is not shade from buildings or trees, and looks at a situation when the light is more than sufficient for growth, but the grass does not grow.

I measured the photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD), obtained temperature data, and observed turf conditions on some sunny days in Iceland.

DSC_2439

The turf was not growing and did not require mowing.

DSC_2498

There was a lot of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).

DSC_2479

On sunny days, the PPFD was > 1000 µmol m-2 s-1 from about 09:30 to 17:30. That is 8 hours a day with PPFD at or above the light saturation point for C3 grasses.

Ppfd
Each blue point is a single measurement of PPFD, and the red vertical line marks the mean time of solar noon on those dates

The light was pretty good, but the grass wasn't growing at all.

DSC_2346

On those sunny days, the daily light integral (DLI) was about 53 mol m-2 d-1.

DSC_2429

The evapotranspiration (ET) was about 1.5 mm d-1, and irrigation was being applied. But the grass only turned green where black sand had been applied. It wasn't growing.

DSC_2551

What is going on with irrigation being supplied and PAR reaching the turf in large amounts, but the grass not growing at all? The reason for that was the temperature, which was too cold for grass growth.

MeanTemp

There wasn't a single day in that two week period with a mean temperature reaching 5°C. In fact, the mean temperature over that period was 1.4°C.

The temperature based growth potential (GP) shows that the GP was close to 0 every day.

Gpc3

Even though the light was close to an optimum, the temperatures were too cold for growth.

Excluding cases of shade from buildings, shade, or landscape features, I struggle to imagine the inverse of the situation described above. That is, when is there ever a situation in which the temperature is close to an optimum for growth, but the PAR is such that grass can't grow?

This controlling effect of temperature on the ability of grass to grow is one of the reasons I find the GP so useful.

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

The comments to this entry are closed.