Wintertime Stress among Golf Course Superintendents: Identifying Environmental Triggers and Anticipatory Responses

Le résumé fourni par la source

Wintertime management presents a significant risk to turfgrass and other horticultural systems, yet the psychological impact of these environmental uncertainties on managers and growers remains poorly understood. The impact of psychological stress can have impacts both on the individual and implications for the management of horticultural systems. This study quantified psychological stress of golf course superintendents during the wintertime and identified specific environmental variables that drive or alleviate that stress across distinct Köppen-Geiger climate (KGC) categories. While overall winter stress was low to moderate, significant spikes occurred when environmental predictability was compromised, and effects were felt unevenly across climate categories. Superintendents in the continental-dry and dry categories experience the highest proportion of elevated stress. A higher number of freeze-thaw events increased stress across all regions. However, other variables had diverging regional impacts, whereby increased snow depth mitigated stress in continental-dry regions while it significantly increased stress in temperate areas while the converse was found related to surface temperatures. These findings underscore the opportunity to shift toward a dynamic weather-based Extension approach. By integrating human-dimension insights with biophysical risk models, Extension professionals can deploy more targeted alerts prior to high-risk events while also providing proactive reassurance messaging low-threat conditions to prevent unwarranted psychological stress and unnecessary resource expenditures. Summarily, aligning psychological thresholds with biophysical realities help to optimize both professional well-being and management operations, and a weather-based social-ecological-technological approach to Extension communications can offer a highly scalable approach to other horticultural sectors.

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