Estimating the effect of agricultural management practices on runoff and erosion

On sloped agricultural fields, water and sediment can be transported downhill as runoff and erosion. This process can not only cause losses of valuable top soil material, water and nutrients, but can also contribute to transport of plant protection products (PPP) into adjacent surface water bodies.

In the authorisation process of PPP, computer simulations are being frequently applied to evaluate the potential risk for the environment, e.g. adjacent surface water bodies.  While working with conservative, generalising assumptions and simple functions to predict the potential effects on the environment at the first stage of an assessment, complexity of the models increases in the higher tiers in order to depict the natural "real-life" conditions and possible effects as accurately as possible.

At knoell, our team of environmental exposure modelling experts supports our clients in developing these higher tier approaches. Most recently, our expert Stephan Sittig contributed to a publication looking into the mitigating effect of micro-dams on erosion and runoff and to what extent findings from field trials on this matter could be considered in existing modelling approaches (Environmental Sciences Europe (2020)32:86).

Read the full article here.

Further information on knoell’s higher-tier environmental exposure modelling expertise can be found here and in our publications section.