Abstract
Purpose
The spatial dependency of pesticide emissions to air, surface water and groundwater is illustrated and quantified using PestLCI 2.0, an updated and expanded version of PestLCI 1.0.
Methods
PestLCI is a model capable of estimating pesticide emissions to air, surface water and groundwater for use in life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling of field applications. After calculating the primary distribution of pesticides between crop and soil, specific modules calculate the pesticide’s fate, thus determining the pesticide emission pattern for the application. PestLCI 2.0 was developed to overcome the limitations of the first model version, replacement of fate calculation equations and introducing new modules for macropore flow and effects of tillage. The accompanying pesticide database was expanded, the meteorological and soil databases were extended to include a range of European climatic zones and soil profiles. Environmental emissions calculated by PestLCI 2.0 were compared to results from the risk assessment models SWASH (surface water emissions), FOCUSPEARL (groundwater via matrix leaching) and MACRO (groundwater including macropore flow, only one scenario available) to partially validate the updated model. A case study was carried out to demonstrate the spatial variation of pesticide emission patterns due to dependency on meteorological and soil conditions.
Results
Compared to PestLCI 1.0, PestLCI 2.0 calculated lower emissions to surface water and higher emissions to groundwater. Both changes were expected due to new pesticide fate calculation approaches and the inclusion of macropore flow. Differences between the SWASH and FOCUSPEARL and PestLCI 2.0 emission estimates were generally lower than 2 orders of magnitude, with PestLCI generally calculating lower emissions. This is attributed to the LCA approach to quantify average cases, contrasting with the worst-case risk assessment approach inherent to risk assessment. Compared to MACRO, the PestLCI 2.0 estimates for emissions to groundwater were higher, suggesting that PestLCI 2.0 estimates of fractions leached to groundwater may be slightly conservative as a consequence of the chosen macropore modelling approach. The case study showed that the distribution of pesticide emissions between environmental compartments strongly depends on local climate and soil characteristics.
Conclusions
PestLCI 2.0 is partly validated in this paper. Judging from the validation data and case study, PestLCI 2.0 is a pesticide emission model in acceptable accordance with both state-of-the-art pesticide risk assessment models. The case study underlines that the common pesticide emission estimation practice in LCI may lead to misestimating the toxicity impacts of pesticide use in LCA.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alletto L, Coquet Y, Benoit P, Heddad D, Barriuso E (2010) Tillage management effects on pesticide fate in soils. A review. Agron Sustain Dev 30:367–400
Alterra (2009). SWASH 3.1.1: Surface Water Scenarios Help. Alterra, Wageningen
Baur P, Schönherr J (1995) Temperature dependence of organic compounds across plant cuticles. Chemosphere 30:1331–1340
Berenzen N, Lentzen-Godding A, Probst M, Schulz H, Schulz R, Liess M (2005) A comparison of predicted and measured levels of runoff-related pesticide concentrations in small lowland streams on a landscape level. Chemosphere 58:683–691
Birkved M, Hauschild MZ (2006) PestLCI: a model for estimating field emissions of pesticides in agricultural LCA. Ecol Model 198:433–451
Boesten J, Helweg A, Businelli M, Bergstrom L, Schäfer H, Delmas A, Kloskowski R, Walker A, Travis K, Smeets L, Jones R, Vanderbroeck V, Van der Linden A, Broerse S, Klein M, Layton R, Jacobsen O-S, Yon D (1996) FOCUS report—soil persistence and EU registration—EU document 7617/VI/96, EU, Brussels
Centofanti T, Hollis JM, Blenkinsop S, Fowler HJ, Truckell I, Dubus IG, Reichenberger S (2008) Development of agro-environmental scenarios to support pesticide risk assessment in Europe. Sci Total Environ 407:574–588
Communities E (2003) Technical guidance document on risk assessment. Part II. European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra
European Communities (2007) PV-GIS estimation utility. http://sunbird.jrc.it/pvgis/apps/pvest.php?europe. Accessed 29 July 2011
FOCUS (2000) FOCUS groundwater scenarios in the EU review of active substances. Report of the FOCUS Groundwater Scenarios Workgroup, EC Document reference Sanco/321/2000 rev.2, 202 pp
FOCUS (2001) FOCUS surface water scenarios in the EU evaluation process under 91/414/EEC—report of the FOCUS working group on surface water scenarios, EU, Brussels
Geodata (2011) Daily weather climate data statistics—Tune/Roskilde: http://www.geodata.us/weather/place.php?usaf=061700&uban=99999&c=Denmark&y=2011. Accessed 29 July 2011
Hall DGM (1993) An amended functional leaching model applicable to structured soils. I. Model description. J Soil Sci 44:579–588
Hiederer R, Jones RJA, Daroussin J (2006) Soil Profile Analytical Database for Europe (SPADE): Reconstruction and validation of the measured data (SPADE/M). Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 106(1):71–85
Hollis JM, Jones RJA, Marshall, CJ, Holden A, Van de Veen JR, Montanarella L (2006) SPADE-2: The soil profile analytical database for Europe, version 1.0. Office for official publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg
Holterman HJ, Van de Zande JC (2003) IMAG drift calculator v1.1: User manual. http://www.toxswa.pesticidemodels.eu/download/IDCmanual.pdf. Accessed 29 July 2011
Jarvis N (2001) The MACRO model, version 4.3 (Technical description). SLU, Uppsala
Klein Tank AMG, Wijngaard JB, Können GP, Böhm R, Demarée G, Gocheva A, Mileta M, Pahiardis S, Jejkrlik L, Kern-Hansen C, Heino R, Bessemoulin P, Müller-Westermeier G, Tzanakou M, Szalai S, Pálsdóttir T, Fitzgerald D, Rubin S, Capaldo M, Maugeri M, Leitass A, Bukantis A, Aberfeld R, Van Engelen AFV, Forland E, Mietus M, Coelho F, Mares C, Razuvaev V, Nieplova E, Cegnar T, Antonio López J, Dahlström B, Moberg A, Kirchhofer W, Ceylan A, Pachaliuk O, Alexander LV, Petrovic P (2002) Daily dataset of 20th-century surface air temperature and precipitation series for the European Climate Assessment. Int J Climatol 22:1441–1453
Kördel W, Egli H, Klein M (2008) Transport of pesticides via macropores (IUPAC technical report). Pure Appl Chem 80:105–160
Korte F, Kvesitadze G, Ugrehelidze D, Gordeziani M, Khatisashvili G, Buadze O, Zaalishvili G, Coulston F (2000) Organic toxicants and plants. Ecotoxicol Environ Saf 47:1–47
Larsbo M, Jarvis N (2003) MACRO 5.0 Model of water flow and solute transport in macroporous soil. Technical description. Uppsala, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Linacre ET (1977) A simple formula for estimating evaporation rates in various climates, using temperature data alone. Agric Meteorol 18:409–424
Linders J, Mensink H, Stephenson G, Wascope D, Racke K (2000) Foliar interception and retention values after pesticide application. A proposal for standardized values for environmental risk assessment. Pure Appl Chem 72:2199–2218
Lumina Decision Support (2010) Analytica user guide. Lumina Decision Support, Inc, Los Gatos
Mackay D (2001) Multimedia environmental models: the fugacity approach, 2nd edn. Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton
Mitra A, Chatterjee C, Mandal FB (2011) Synthetic chemical pesticides and their effects on birds. Res J Environ Toxicol 5:81–96
Nemecek T, Kägi T (2007) Life cycle inventories of Swiss and European agricultural production systems. Final report ecoinvent v2.o No 15a. Zürich and Dübendorf, Agroscope Reckenholz-Taenikon Research Station. www.ecoinvent.ch Accessed 16 December 2011
Oturan N, Traikovska S, Oturan MA, Couderchet M, Aaron JJ (2008) Study of the toxicity of diuron and its metabolites formed in aqueous medium during application of the electrochemical advanced oxidation process ‘electro-Fenton’. Chemosphere 73:1550–1556
RIVM, PBL, Alterra (2011) FOCUSPEARL 4.4.4. RIVM, Bilthoven, PBL, Bilthoven, Alterra, Wageningen
Rosenbaum RK, Bachmann TK, Gold LS, Huijbregts MAJ, Jolliet O, Juraske R, Koehler A, Larsen HF, MacLeod M, Margni M, McKone TE, Payet J, Schuhmacher M, Van de Meent D, Hauschild MZ (2008) USEtox: The UNEP/SETAC-consensus model: recommended characterisation factors for human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity in life cycle impact assessment. Int J Life Cycle Assess 13(7):532–546
Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories (2011) ecoinvent v. 2.2. Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, St-Gallen
Thompson HM (1996) Interactions between pesticides: a review of reported effects and their implications for wildlife risk assessment. Ecotoxicol 5:59–81
Van Leeuwen CJ, Hermens JLM (eds) (1995) Risk assessment of chemicals: an introduction, 1st edn. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht
Van Wesenbeeck I, Driver J, Ross J (2008) Relationship between the evaporation rate and vapour pressure of moderately and highly volatile chemicals. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 80:315–318
Villholth KG, Jensen KH, Fredericia J (1998) Flow and transport processes in a macroporous subsurface-drained glacial till soil I: field investigations. J Hydrol 207:98–120
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the project ‘Development of genetically modified cereals adapted to the increased CO2 levels of the future’ funded by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries for funding of the research supporting this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible editor: Ivan Muñoz
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1
(DOCX 84 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dijkman, T.J., Birkved, M. & Hauschild, M.Z. PestLCI 2.0: a second generation model for estimating emissions of pesticides from arable land in LCA. Int J Life Cycle Assess 17, 973–986 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0439-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0439-2