Assessment of pesticide leaching at the Pan-European level using a spatially distributed model

Simulations were performed for 1062 unique combinations of Soil Mapping Unit, Climate Zone and Country. Soil properties were obtained from the Soil Profile Analytical Database of Europe. Daily weather data were obtained from the MARS database. Irrigation data, crop data and product properties were compiled from various sources, such as inventories, field-studies and the literature. The 1062 unique comb inations together represent 75% of the total agricultural area of the EU.

Results confirm that the predicted leaching concentration generally increases with precipitation and irrigation and decreases with increasing organic matter content. Because of the strong sensitivity of the leaching concentration to soil properties, there is a strong variability of the calculated leaching concentration at relatively short distances. Due to large irrigation amounts combined with large temporal variation of rainfall in the Southern European countries, areas of high leaching risk (‘hotspots’) as assessed by means of the EuroPEARL model occur in all countries of the European Union, including the Southern European countries.