Soil Compaction Before and After a Rolling Stones Concert at Petco Park

December 8, 2006

At the Crop Science Society Meetings of America, which were held in November, 2006 in Indianapolis, IN, we presented the results of one of our more quirky, but enlightening projects, Soil Compaction Evaluation with the Spectrum Technologies’ SC-900 Before and After a Rolling Stones Concert at Petco Park. (Document is large — 1384 KB — so it will open slowly)

In this study, we teamed up with Petco Park superintendent (and co-author) Luke Yoder to characterize the impact of a huge rock and roll concert on the performance of stadium’s soils. To do this, we employed the use of several tools, including the SC 900 compaction meter from Spectrum Technologies, as well as the GPS and precision management equipment that we have previously described.

We found that:

• Soil compaction did increase after the concert, particularly in the areas where the four cranes (three 30-ton cranes and one 70-ton crane) were operating.
• Even though the soil was more compacted after the concert, the USGA root zone specification sand handled the traffic well, so that it remained below the threshold of 3 Mpa (435 psi) that can cause problems with turf health.
• The Spectrum Technologies SC-900 compaction meter performed well