Pesticides are used to control pests in managed biological system such as agricultural crops and golf course turf.  Off-site transport of pesticides with runoff and their potential to adversely affect non-target aquatic organisms has inspired the evaluation of management practices to minimize pesticide loading to nearby surface waters.  Riparian buffers or vegetative filter strips have been shown to reduce contaminants in runoff from row crops.  This research evaluated the effectiveness of turf buffers (creeping bentgrass, 2.5-cm height of cut, flow lengths = 10, 25 or 50-ft) to mitigate pesticide (trichlorfon, tebuconazole) transport with runoff.  Rainfall simulators provided precipitation (1-in-10-year, 2-hour rainfall) generating runoff that initiated delivery of an environmentally realistic runon matrix containing the compounds of interest and soil particulates.  Time and flow-weighted runoff samples were collected after transport through the turfgrass buffers.  This presentation highlights a field study demonstrating the effectiveness of turfgrass buffers to reduce both runoff volume and the mass of pesticides transported with runoff.  Information obtained from this study was used to evaluate the use of the Vegetative Filter Strip Model (VFSMOD) to predict the mitigation of pesticide residues with turfgrass buffers.  Effectiveness of the VFSMOD is presented in a companion presentation. <br/>

Quantification of turfgrass buffer performance in reducing transport of pesticides in surface runoff

254th National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.