Many pesticides are applied nationally to a variety of crops, under diverse climatic and hydrologic conditions, and with wide variations in spatial use patterns. Prediction of pesticide exposure in aquatic ecosystems is an important component to a national level ecological risk assessment and requires the consideration of high vulnerability flowing water bodies in addition to static ones.  The Watershed Regressions for Pesticides for Multiple Pesticides (WARP-MP) model was applied nationally for approximately 85,000 hydrologic unit code 12 (HUC-12) sub-watersheds to identify the most vulnerable watersheds for each crop of interest. Next, the physically-based Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) watershed-scale model was applied to a subset of the highest vulnerability HUC-12 watersheds where suitable data for model calibration and validation were available. The SWAT models developed for the targeted watersheds associated with each crop were then used to predict probability distributions of pesticide EECs for comparison with screening level aquatic EECs.

Application of the SWAT Model in a national pesticide exposure assessment for flowing water bodies

248th National Meeting (2014)

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