Presented by

S. DeGloria
Crop & Soil Sciences

and

S. Pacenka
Water Resources Institute

Tuesday, April 4, 2000
3:30-4:30 PM
135 Emerson Hall

Abstract

The project goal was to assess how well a pesticide simulation model could represent the environmental fate of pesticides from known sources. Pesticide regulatory agencies may benefit from having a capacity to simulate the mobility and persistence of pesticide residues. Such a capacity might assist pesticide registration decisions, provide pesticide behavior information for education and technical assistance and target future monitoring locations. The simulation model uses input data of climate, soils, and land use to represent specific landscape elements for a specific time period. The model routes incoming precipitation and applied pesticides over and through the land to account for where and when the pesticide degrades or exists the watershed. An application using Hydrologic Simulation Program, Fortran (HSPF) was able to predict seasonal runoff patterns, but was less robust for predicting the concentration of Atrazine in stream water.