Patterns and dynamics of the potential environmental risks associated with agricultural pesticide use: Global Total Applied Toxicity (gTAT)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ralf Schulz
• Subject Area: Ecology of Land Use
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 504629936

Within a previous DFG-funded project, the concept of Total Applied Toxicity (TAT) has been developed using data for agricultural pesticides in the US. TAT describes pesticide use data that were toxicity-weighted by regulatory toxicity thresholds for different aquatic and terrestrial species groups and can be used, e.g. to display changes over time. The TAT as an integrative measure appears to be particularly suited for evaluations of the potential environmental risks at large spatio-temporal scales. In the present project, global TAT (gTAT) estimates should be developed using global pesticide use data (relevant to >96% of global crop acreage; 655 pesticide active ingredients) and toxicity data for a large number of species groups (fish, aquatic invertebrates, aquatic plants, mammals, pollinators, terrestrial plants). In a first step, a variety of gTAT representations (i.e., space × time × species groups) will be generated, following extensive input data validations, while the interplay between pesticide and species characteristics for the gTAT will be the focus. Applying multivariate statistical approaches to large scale crop data (stemming from the Spatial Production Allocation Model for 42 major crops), the gTAT will be contextualized to better understand the impact of the crop system (e.g., crop and pesticide composition, harvested area) on gTAT estimates for different organisms. In a third step, gTAT estimates will be developed for soil organisms, based on pesticide toxicity data for earthworms and soils arthropods shedding light on the large-scale environmental risk situation for this group of organisms, which is key from an agronomic and agro-ecological point of view. Parameters such as soil organic carbon, pesticide half-life and koc will be included to better understand gTAT estimations for soil organisms. The multi-dimensional project results will be made available to science and society via scientific publications along with interactive online formats.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants