M. Bleecker et al., MAPPING ATRAZINE LEACHING POTENTIAL WITH INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL DATABASES AND SIMULATION-MODELS, Journal of soil and water conservation, 50(4), 1995, pp. 388-394
Citations number
33
Categorie Soggetti
Water Resources",Ecology,"Agriculture Soil Science
A methodology was developed to integrate a simulation model and enviro
nmental databases for mapping pesticide leaching potential at landscap
e scale. A deterministic, one-dimensional solute transport model was a
pplied using soil, land use, and climate data compiled for the northea
st region of the United States. Landscape units that combined soil and
climate variables were modeled to produce estimates of atrazine leach
ing in agricultural lands. Model results were aggregated into class ra
nges indicating the proportion of a landscape unit susceptible to pest
icide leaching. Significant results were, first, that pesticide leachi
ng potential was related to the amount and distribution of rainfall an
d soil organic carbon, and second, that a functional deterministic sim
ulation model and database were developed for use by environmental pro
fessionals to model and visualize soil behavior at regional scale. Imp
lications of this study indicate that aggregated leaching indices shou
ld be mapped at scales no finer than 1:250,000 when using regional-sca
le databases; and uncertainty associated with spatial and temporal var
iability, model type, and environmental database quality limit interpr
etations of regional model simulations and resultant map products to l
andscape units similar in size to Major Land Resource Areas or individ
ual states, whichever is larger.