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Updated: Aug 4, 2026

Integrated Field Lysimetry and Porewater Sampling for Evaluation of Chemical Mobility in Soils and Established Vegetation
Published on: July 4, 2014
Pesticide exposure assessment for surface waters in the EU. Part 2: Determination of statistically based run-off and
Martin Bach1, Mirjam Diesner2, Dietlinde Großmann2
1Institute of Landscape Ecology and Resources Management, Giessen University, Germany.
Background:
In order to assess surface water exposure to active substances of plant protection products (PPPs) in the European Union (EU), the FOCUS (FOrum for the Co-ordination of pesticide fate models and their USe) surface water workgroup introduced four run-off and six drainage scenarios for Step 3 of the tiered FOCUSsw approach. These scenarios may not necessarily represent realistic worst-case situations for the different Member States of the EU. Hence, the suitability of the scenarios for risk assessment in the national authorisation procedures is not known.
Results:
Using Germany as an example, the paper illustrates how national soil-climate scenarios can be developed to model entries of active substances into surface waters from run-off and erosion (using the model PRZM) and from drainage (using the model MACRO). In the authorisation procedure for PPPs on Member State level, such soil-climate scenarios can be used to determine exposure endpoints with a defined overall percentile.
Conclusion:
The approach allows the development of national specific soil-climate scenarios and to calculate percentile-based exposure endpoints. The scenarios have been integrated into a software tool analogous to FOCUS-SWASH which can be used in the future to assess surface water exposure in authorisation procedures of PPPs in Germany. © 2017 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

