Discover the SETAC North America 45th Annual Meeting!
Mark your calendars for October 20-24, 2024! Aquanty staff (Michael Callaghan and Brayden McNeill) will be attending the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry’s (SETAC) annual conference, dedicated to advancing environmental science and informed decision-making through collaboration, communication, education, and leadership.
Michael will be presenting a poster "Towards Fully Integrated Hydrological Fate and Transport Modelling for Plant Protection Products” that you won’t want to miss!
Visit the conference website for the full speaker list and registration details:
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Poster Title
Towards fully integrated hydrological fate and transport modelling for plant protection products: Incorporating groundwater, tile drainage and runoff
Authors
Michael V. Callaghan [1,*], Steven K. Frey [1,2], Killian Miller [1], Hyoun-Tae Hwang [1,2], Reza Zolfaghari [3], Klaus Hammel [3], Steven J. Berg [1,2], Edward A. Sudicky [1,2]
Affiliations
[1] Aquanty Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
[2] Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
[3] Bayer AG, Monheim, Germany
*Corresponding author. Aquanty Inc., 600 Weber St N Unit B, Waterloo, ON, N2V 1K4, Canada, +1(519)279-1080, mcallaghan@aquanty.com
Abstract
Plant protection products (PPPs) are herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides used in agriculture to protect crops from pests and disease. In the context of PPP authorization, water exposure assessments (drinking water and aquatic exposure) use numerical modelling software to simulate relevant hydrological processes. Common practice for estimating PPP leaching to groundwater, PPP loading onto surface water via tile drainage, or PPP transport via runoff, utilizes multiple one-dimensional models, each representing a separate exposure pathway. Separate analysis of individual exposure pathways can result in disparate assumptions being made that represent relative worst-case scenarios for each pathway, rather than an integrated reasonable worst-case scenario for all pathways. The interplay between PPP degradation, leaching to groundwater, transport in tile drainage, and runoff is well suited to simulation using an integrated surface-subsurface fate and transport model.
Towards the development of a three-dimensional, fully integrated, surface-subsurface hydrologic model for simulating plant protection product (PPP) fate and transport, this study presents verification of functionality added to the HydroGeoSphere (HGS) model against other recognized models: PRZM, HYDRUS, PEARL, PELMO, and MACRO. Added features included: automatic irrigation; non-linear adsorption; temperature and soil water content-dependent degradation; and, solute uptake by plant roots. HGS results for leaching of PPP mass to groundwater showed the highest correlation, lowest error, and lowest bias relative to PEARL model results. Simulation of macropore flow to tile drains in HGS produced intermittent tile drain flow in summer that resulted in generally lower peak effluent concentrations compared to the MACRO model. Simulation of runoff in HGS produced higher total runoff compared to the PRZM model, attributed to lower evapotranspiration in HGS. Use of the integrated HGS model produced greater agreement in water balance components relative to using multiple models to simulate individual hydrologic pathways.