Special report: Saving water in the UAE

As the UAE can no longer afford to waste its precious water, this has prompted a golf club to half its usage and scientists to search for native plants for landscaping schemes.

Emirates Golf Club has halved its water use. Jaime Puebla / The National

The UAE can no longer continue to waste its precious water resources and this has prompted a Dubai golf course to halve its usage, a Sharjah professor to search for native plants for landscaping schemes, and study into the water requirements of trees in Abu Dhabi’s artificial forests.

Contents:

1- Golf course wins turf war on wasted water

2- Ghaf trees could turn UAE desert green

3- Understanding of plant heritage key to Dubai project

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Golf course wins turf war on wasted water

Emirates Golf Club in Dubai was hailed as the Middle East’s first all-grass course when it opened in 1988 – but it came at a cost.

The course, in Emirates Hills, was allowed to use as much potable water, for free, as it needed to keep fairways and greens lush and attract big-spending golf tourists. In 2007, that meant 2.68 billion litres.

Enter Craig Haldane. Since the director of course maintenance arrived in 2007 use of water, which is now neither free nor drinkable, has been halved.

“When you come a new site you see things with a new pair of eyes, and it did not take me long to see things needed to change if we wanted to move forward and improve,” said Mr Haldane.

Salt-resistant grass, high-tech irrigation systems and treated sewage water helped to cut use to 1.36 billion litres by late 2013.

The club is home to the Majlis and Faldo courses, with a total of 69 hectares of grass.

Some of the changes Mr Haldane brought were reducing turf areas and replacing them with native grasses that were more resistant to drought and more salt-tolerant.

A variety of turf grass known as paspalum is now used on the Faldo course. The Majlis course uses Bermuda grass, which handles saline water reasonably well, said Mr Haldane.

Since 2012 the Majlis course has used an advanced irrigation system with 2,208 sprinklers that can be monitored individually.

“With the new irrigation system we can now apply exactly what we need, exactly when we need it,” said Mr Haldane.

The system can be monitored remotely so irrigation can be stopped or reduced on rainy days. A weather station measures wind, temperature and humidity to calculate how much water will evaporate on a given day.

“Prior to having that it was a bit of a guessing game,” Mr Haldane said. “We have a lot more information at our fingertips today than we did back then, so as an industry we really are in a fortunate position in that we can put out only what we need to put out.

“In 2008, the club started using treated sewage effluent, provided via Dubai Municipality, but has had to introduce it gradually, mixing recycled and potable water.

“This was required due to the higher amount of salts in recycled water, which create less desirable growing conditions for the turf. For the past five years, the club has relied solely on recycled water.”

In January, the club became the first in the region to be certified by the Golf Environment Organisation, which monitors performance in six areas of sustainability: water, nature, energy, supply chain, pollution control and community.

Mr Haldane said the environmental performance of courses should be measured in wider terms than just how much water they used.

“As an industry we, per square metre, use a lot less water than any home owner would,” he said.

“Golf courses bring a lot of good things into an area. The birdlife out here is phenomenal. We have got desert foxes, we have got Egyptian geese that migrate, we have got bluejay.

“We’ve got so much flora and fauna that we should be telling people about. We probably do as much, if not more, for the environment than anyone else.”

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Ghaf trees could turn UAE desert green

ABU DHABI // Among a forest of thousands of identical trees, Wafa Al Yamani is interested in just four. The well-being of these individual ghaf trees could hold the key to a more effective, efficient and environmentally-friendly means of irrigation that could, in theory, help to turn the UAE’s desert green.

The four trees, all of different sizes and ages, belong to the common desert native species, also known as Prosopis Cineraria, are among 163,740 others in the Khub Al Dahs forest that lies on the outskirts of Madinat Zayed in the Western Region.

However, unlike the others, they are being monitored over a year in an experiment by Ms Al Yamani, an assistant scientist at the soil quality section of the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD), to find out the realistic water requirements of the trees.

A collaboration with scientists from New Zealand, the experiment involves the use of heat pulse technology with a heater and sensors placed inside the trunk of each tree.

“Every 30 minutes we give a pulse of heat and then the heat travels inside the trunk of the tree and the liquid inside the tree gets a little bit warmer,” said Ms Al Yamani. “We consider it [the heat] as a trace for us so we would know the movement of the water and then we actually calculate the velocity of the heat.

“By doing different physical calculations in the end we will be able to convert this heat pulse velocity into water velocity and then from that we can calculate the flow of the water and then the amount of water itself. So we would know in the end how much water is really going inside this tree, which means how much it really requires and consumes,” she said.

The experiment also relies on time-domain reflectometry which measures the moisture content of the soil around each tree and calculates how much water given to each tree seeps back into the ground.

Ms Al Yamani’s trees, as with all of the trees across the 871 hectare forest, are irrigated by ground water wells. The plot also contains equipment measuring meteorological data - sunlight, temperature, humidity and wind velocity - which all have an impact on irrigation requirements.

Earlier this month, scientists began another set of measurements with the same tree species investigating what will happen to them and their irrigation requirements if the highly saline ground water, with average salinity if 6,000 parts per million (ppm), is mixed with treated sewage effluent.

The experiment has already yielded useful information with results announced last year, following 12 months monitoring palm trees. In some cases, they are over-irrigated by as much as two-and-a-half times, the research showed.

Precise data about the actual water needs of trees such as ghaf is important if Abu Dhabi’s forests, planted by the late Sheikh Zayed and irrigated with millions of gallons of water, are to be managed sustainably. The forestry drive started nearly 40 years ago and currently EAD manages 409 forests covering an area of 220,000 hectares, approximately four per cent of Abu Dhabi’s total land area.

The forests contain more than 18 million trees, of which native species forms 87 per cent.

While some of the forests feature palm trees, Khub Al Dahs – which means the land that feels heavy under your feet as you walk – is planted with draught-tolerant trees. Among them are sidar (Ziziphus spina-christi), salam or samar (Acacia tortilis), arak, or the toothbrush tree (Salvadora persica), and table tree (Acacia radianna) as well as ghaf.

The trees are planted in 14 blocks, each featuring a single species. The forest also supports 3,200 sand gazelles that are being fed and given water.

“The legacy of Sheikh Zayed, the forests have heritage value,” said Ms Al Yamani. “EAD is also planning to rank them based on other factors such as their contribution to protecting infrastructure and settlements and improve air quality, sand dune fixation, and the provision of shelter for animals and birds. Yet, the question of water use is also a central one,” she said.

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Understanding of plant heritage key to Dubai project

Hardy desert plants native to the UAE and adapted to the harsh conditions should not be overlooked in favour of exotic, and often very thirsty, imported species.

This is the lesson being taught to students from the Dubai English Speaking College as part of a project to study and encourage the use of indigenous flora.

About 30 species of plants are being grown at the campus as part of the Dubai Nursery Project. The project is a collaboration between the school and British company Interserve.

“The key drivers are sustainability, leaving a legacy and engaging with the community,” said Andrew Tilford, company director at Interserve Environmental Services, and one of 18 employees to participate in the project.

It enlisted the help of Dr Ali El-Keblawy, associate professor at the University of Sharjah and director of the Sharjah Seed Bank and Herbarium. Throughout December, he took a group of about 20 students to collect seeds and cuttings.

“We have many ornamental plants that can compete with exotics in shape and colour,” said Dr El-Keblawy, who is investigating the potential of about 70 native species in a project funded by the Qatar Foundation.

Among the plants he is looking at is a perennial shrub Calligonum comosum. Known in Arabic as Arta, it blossoms in bright red from December to April.

Other plants such as Rumex vesicarius, a leafy vegetable common in the mountains, and the Morenga tree, have value as potential food crops. The Morenga tree was “the only source of edible oil for this region before” and could be reviewed as a biofuel crop, he said.

“These plants represent an important component in the life of people who used to inhabit this area,” he said.

Besides native plant’s heritage value, they are also easier to maintain.

“Using native plants is very important, especially here in this arid environment,” said Dr El-Keblawy, explaining that they require as much as 80 per cent less water, compared to imported decorative plants, and fewer pesticides and herbicides as they are generally more resilient to the local pathogens and pests.

While there are many benefits to using indigenous plants in landscaping or for crops, they are not well-studied and this represents the biggest challenge. To overcome this, the Government can fund more research, establish nurseries to provide seeds and plants and educational gardens to explain these plants’ value to the public.

“We need to train people how to germinate them, how to propagate them in nurseries and how to grow them in cities,” said Dr El-Keblawy.

As part of the project, Interserve installed a waste-water recycling system with a capacity of 600 litres per day on the school grounds. The company uses the same technology but on larger scale at its construction sites and labour accommodation in the UAE and Qatar, said George Franks, its managing director.

“It will take waste water and it will turn out very high-quality end water,” he said, explaining that the water is suitable for uses such as cleaning, washing clothes and irrigation.

In January, employees from Interserve’s offices in the UK, the United States and South Africa gathered in Dubai to help the students build the nursery. The project is part of a leadership training scheme at the company.

To help further reduce irrigation water demands, Interserve also installed a waste-water recycling system with a capacity of 600 litres per day on the school grounds. The company uses the same technology but on larger scale at its construction sites and labour accommodation in the UAE and Qatar, said George Franks, its managing director.

“It will take waste water and it will turn out very high-quality end water,” said Mr Franks, explaining that the water is suitable for uses such as cleaning, washing clothes and irrigation.

For 17-year-old Dania Chatila, a member of the school’s eco club, the project helped confirm her interest in the sciences.

“I want to be able to leave this planet saying that I helped it and that I ensured that it was sustainable for generations to come,” she said. “We all know about palm trees but I learnt about plants here within the Middle East that not many people know about and it is really interesting.”