title: Pesticide fate modeling in soils with the crop model STICS: Feasibility for assessment of agricultural practices.
abstract: Numerous pesticide fate models are available, but few of them are able to take into account specific agricultural practices, such as catch crop, mixing crops or tillage in their predictions. In order to better integrate crop management and crop growth in the simulation of diffuse agricultural pollutions, and to manage both pesticide and nitrogen pollution, a pesticide fate module was implemented in the crop model STICS. The objectives of the study were: (i) to implement a pesticide fate module in the crop model STICS; (ii) to evaluate the model performance using experimental data from three sites with different pedoclimatic contexts, one in The Netherlands and two in northern France; (iii) to compare the simulations with several pesticide fate models; and (iv) to test the impact of specific agricultural practices on the transfer of the dissolved fraction of pesticides. The evaluations were carried out with three herbicides: bentazone, isoproturon, and atrazine. The strategy applied in this study relies on a noncalibration approach and sensitivity test to assess the operating limits of the model. To this end, the evaluation was performed with default values found in the literature and completed by sensitivity tests. The extended version of the STICS named STICS-Pest, shows similar results with other pesticide fate models widely used in the literature. Moreover, STICS-Pest was able to estimate realistic crop growth and catch crop dynamic, which thus illustrate agricultural practices leading to a reduction of nitrate and a change in pesticide leaching. The dynamic plot-scale model, STICS-Pest is able to simulate nitrogen and pesticide fluxes, when the hydrologic context is in the validity range of the reservoir (or capacity) model. According to these initial results, the model may be a relevant tool for studying the effect of long-term agricultural practices on pesticide residue dynamics in soil and the associated diffuse pollution transfer.
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC, Univ Paris 06, CNRS, EPHE, UMR 7619 METIS, Paris, France; UMR 1347 Agroecologie, AgroSup Dijon, Dijon, France. Electronic address: wilfried.queyrel@agrosupdijon.fr.
authors.forename: Wilfried
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Queyrel
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC, Univ Paris 06, CNRS, EPHE, UMR 7619 METIS, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Florence
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Habets
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC, Univ Paris 06, CNRS, EPHE, UMR 7619 METIS, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Hélène
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Blanchoud
authors.affiliation: INRA US1116 Agroclim, Avignon, France.
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ripoche
authors.affiliation: INRA US1116 Agroclim, Avignon, France.
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Launay
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D004787:Environmental Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005602:France; D008956:Models, Chemical; D009426:Netherlands; D010573:Pesticide Residues / Q000032:analysis*; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012989:Soil Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D010573:Pesticide Residues; D012987:Soil; D012989:Soil Pollutants
keywords: Agricultural practices; Catch crop; Crop model; Herbicides; Model evaluation; Pesticide leaching; Soil