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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1505480
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancement in Hydrological Modeling and Water Resources Management for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) View all 10 articles

Development of a fully integrated hydrological fate and transport model for plant protection products: Incorporating groundwater, tile drainage and runoff

Provisionally accepted
Michael V. Callaghan Michael V. Callaghan 1*Steven K. Frey Steven K. Frey 1,2Killian Miller Killian Miller 1Hyoun-Tae Hwang Hyoun-Tae Hwang 1,2Reza Zolfaghari Reza Zolfaghari 3Klaus Hammel Klaus Hammel 3Steven J. Berg Steven J. Berg 1,2Edward A. Sudicky Edward A. Sudicky 1,2
  • 1 Aquanty Inc., Waterloo, Canada
  • 2 University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  • 3 Bayer AG, Monheim, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Plant protection products (PPPs) such as pesticides and herbicides are seeing increased use worldwide. In the context of PPP authorization and registration, water exposure assessments (drinking water and aquatic exposure) use numerical modeling to simulate relevant hydrological processes and exposure pathways. 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 hydrology and chemical fate and transport model.This study presents functionality added to HydroGeoSphere (HGS), a three-dimensional, fully integrated, surface-subsurface hydrologic model. HGS was verified against other recognized models: PRZM, HYDRUS, PEARL, PELMO, and MACRO. Added features include: 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.AET, actual evapotranspiration; CN, curve number; DT50, half-life; FOCUS, Forum for the Coordination of Pesticide Models and their Use; GW, groundwater; Koc, soil organic carbon-water

    Keywords: pesticide, three-dimensional, reactive transport, HydroGeoSphere, agricultural water, Green water

    Received: 02 Oct 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Callaghan, Frey, Miller, Hwang, Zolfaghari, Hammel, Berg and Sudicky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Michael V. Callaghan, Aquanty Inc., Waterloo, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.