Background On sloped agricultural fields, water and sediment can be transported downhill as runoff and erosion. This process can cause losses of valuable top soil material, water resources for plant availability, and nutrients as well as transport of plant protection products (PPP) into adjacent surface water bodies. In the European and the US risk assessment for the registration of PPP, runoff and erosion are numerically calculated with the simulation model PRZM which uses the USDA runoff curve number (CN) concept for the water movement. Results from runoff field trials were used to estimate the effect of dedicated management practices in terms of mitigating runoff and erosion, i.e. creating micro-dams between the ridges of potato fields or in maize cultivation on model input parameters. Results Application of different cultivation and tillage techniques (micro-dams/bunds) showed a consistent decrease of the measured quantities of runoff, erosion, and PPP transport as well as of the calculated CN and predicted environmental concentrations in surface water. The results presented here support the approach to quantitatively consider in-field risk mitigation measures (if applied) in the context of regulatory surface water exposure calculations, as proposed by the SETAC MAgPIE workshop. Conclusion Based on these data, a robust case can be made to consider innovative runoff mitigation for risk assessment purposes by, e.g. lowering the CN in the exposure scenarios. In the assessment presented herein, an average decrease in the mean of the derived CN of 86 of 21 points (± 11, 10th percentile: 12) for potatoes could be derived. For maize, the mean calculated CN of 73 was lowered on average by 3 points.
Understanding the long-term sequestration of veterinary antibiotics into soil fractions with different bioavailability is important in terms of assessing their eco-toxicological impact. We performed 60-d batch sorption experiments with radiolabeled sulfadiazine (SDZ) using samples from two agricultural soils. Sequential extraction with CaCl/MeOH (easily accessible fraction), microwave (residual fraction, RES), and combustion (nonextractable residues, NER) was used to quantify the sequestration dynamics of the C-derived SDZ-equivalent concentration. Multiple harsh extractions allowed us to mathematically extrapolate to the amount of SDZ equivalents that can be potentially extracted, resulting in halving the NER fraction after 60 d. A modified two-stage model with irreversible sorption combined with global parameter optimization was able to display the sequestration dynamics. We demonstrated this with sterilized samples in which no transformation of the parent compound was observed. This also showed that transformation was primarily biologically driven. These modeling results verified the procedure, which was then applied to nontreated samples from both soils to estimate effective parameter values for SDZ-derived equivalents. Observed initial sorption, to which up to 20% of the kinetic sorption sites attributed, was included in the model. Both the RES and NER fractions reached a sorption plateau, with NER occupying about 30% of the kinetic fraction (RES+NER) for all soils. The sorption and sequestration of SDZ were soil-specific and dominated by kinetics. Sequestration in the RES fraction was much slower (characteristic time: 60 d) than the redistribution in the NER fraction (characteristic time: <6 d). The work presented here contributes to the prediction of the dynamics of (bio-)availability.
Based on small-scale laboratory and field-scale lysimeter experiments, the sorption and biodegradation of sulfonamide sulfadiazine (SDZ) were investigated in unsaturated sandy and silty-clay soils. Sorption and biodegradation were low in the laboratory, while the highest leaching rates were observed when SDZ was mixed with manure. The leaching rate decreased when SDZ was mixed with pure water, and was smallest with the highest SDZ concentrations. In the laboratory, three transformation products (TPs) developed after an initial lag phase. However, the amount of TPs was different for different mixing-scenarios. The TP 2-aminopyrimidine was not observed in the laboratory, but was the most prevalent TP at the field scale. Sorption was within the same range at the laboratory and field scales. However, distinctive differences occurred with respect to biodegradation, which was higher in the field lysimeters than at the laboratory scale. While the silty-clay soil favored sorption of SDZ, the sandy, and thus highly permeable, soil was characterized by short half-lives and thus a quick biodegradation of SDZ. For 2-aminopyrimidine, half-lives of only a few days were observed. Increased field-scale biodegradation in the sandy soil resulted from a higher water and air permeability that enhanced oxygen transport and limited oxygen depletion. Furthermore, low pH was more important than the organic matter and clay content for increasing the biodegradation of SDZ. A numerical analysis of breakthrough curves of bromide, SDZ, and its TPs showed that preferential flow pathways strongly affected the solute transport within shallow parts of the soil profile at the field scale. However, this effect was reduced in deeper parts of the soil profile. Due to high field-scale biodegradation in several layers of both soils, neither SDZ nor 2-aminopyrimidine was detected in the discharge of the lysimeter at a depth of 1 m. Synthetic 50 year long simulations, which considered the application of manure with SDZ for general agricultural practices in Germany and humid climate conditions, showed that the concentration of SDZ decreased below 0.1 μg/L in both soils below the depth of 50 cm.
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