Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) for Risk Management of Chemicals in Agriculture
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SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO-BICOCCA Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences PhD program: Environmental Sciences Cycle: 80R Environmental decision support systems (EDSS) for risk management of chemicals in agriculture Student: Andrea Di Guardo Registration number: 787817 Tutor: Prof. Antonio Finizio Coordinator: Prof. Maria Luce Frezzotti ACADEMIC YEAR 2015/2016 2 Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................…5 Chemicals in agriculture ....................................................................................................... 6 Models as a representation of environmental processes ................................................. 14 Environmental Decision Support Systems ......................................................................... 17 Overview ............................................................................................................................ 18 References ......................................................................................................................... 24 ValorE: An integrated and GIS-based decision support system for livestock manure management in the Lombardy region (northern Italy)………………………………..…………………….29 Introduction.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….29 ValorE: a DSS to enhance livestock manure management……………………………………………..30 Tasks of the DSS ValorE………………………………………………………………………………………………….34 A case study using the DSS ValorE......................................................................................37 Model validation, updating procedures and stakeholders interaction……………………………38 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………40 References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….41 A client–server software for the identification of groundwater vulnerability to pesticides at regional level…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….43 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….43 Materials and methods…………………………………………………………………………………………………44 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..51 References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………51 A moni-modelling approach to manage groundwater risk to pesticide leaching at regional scale…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………53 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….54 Materials and methods…………………………………………………………………………………………………55 Results………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….58 Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….60 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….61 References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..61 Sustainable use of veterinary pharmaceuticals on the territory (Sust-PHarm): Linking available database of manure management and environmental fate models………………….63 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………64 3 Materials and methods……………………………………………………………………………………….………..64 Results and discussion………………………………………………………………………………..………………..69 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….73 References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..74 A novel fuzzy expert system to assess the sustainability of the viticulture at the wine-estate scale………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...77 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…78 Materials and methods………………………………………………………………………………………………...78 Results………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....83 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….85 References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...85 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..87 4 Introduction Since 1960, the world population has more than doubled, from approximately 2.9 billion in 1960 to more than 7.4 billion today. The demands placed on global agricultural production arising out of population and income growth almost tripled. Agricultural growth contributes directly to food security. It also supports poverty reduction. And it acts as an engine of overall economic growth in much of the developing world. The success of the agricultural sector has not been shared uniformly across regions and countries, however, and it is unclear whether this success can be sustained much less extended to those left behind. Many of the least developed countries, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa and in marginal production environments across the developing world, continue to experience low or stagnant agricultural productivity, rising food deficits, and high levels of hunger and poverty. By 2050, world population is projected to grow to between 9 and 10 billion people (World Bank, 2007). Several factors concurred to the increased yields of the last decades and are expected to provide even more growth in the future. The introduction of modern crop varieties, namely high yielding crop varieties such as rice and wheat in mid 1960s; for example, in developing countries the production growth in the 1960-2000 period ranged from 17% to 40%. Irrigation became the most important productivity factor for expanding agriculture in developing countries or introduce high yielding crop in developed countries; irrigated areas has increased from 50 million hectares in 1900 to about 270 million hectares today. Labour productivity growth rates seem to have increased, with a strong growth in the middle of last century in developed countries and after 1980s in developing countries. Finally, the introduction of chemicals, in some cases at the beginning of the last century, could be considered the main productivity factor in the modern intensive farming, firstly in developed countries since the 1950s and in developing countries since 1970s. This PhD thesis focuses on the adverse factors related to the use of chemicals in agriculture looking at the fate of substances in the environment and in particular into groundwater since, as an example, 65% of the whole drinking water in Europe comes from groundwater stocks (Bouraoui, 2007). Our first objective was the design and development of an Environmental Decision Support System for the evaluation of territorial vulnerability to chemical substances with couples environmental models with a geographical information system (GIS). VULPES (Vulnerability to Pesticides) has been developed originally for evaluating the environmental fate of plant protection products (PPPs) and then adapted to evaluate veterinary medicine products (VMPs) as well. In particular the transition between these two different chemicals evaluation introduced some novelties that made it the first tool for the evaluation of territorial vulnerability to VMPs. At same time we dedicated our effort to the definition of another EDSS called ValorE which addresses all the major components of manure management in Lombardy region (Northern of Italy). ValorE provides a picture of the current flows of manure in the entire region and provide advices to policy makers (regional system) and to farmers (farm system) for the correct management and distribution of manure and mineral fertilisers. At last, we dedicated our efforts for the realisation of an indicator 5 (called Vigneto) of environmental impact of agronomic operations in vineyard, in order to evaluate the sustainability of such operations within a comprehensive project of sustainability of the Italian viticulture. The PhD course and the main part of the work has been done at the University of Milano- Bicocca, but we established collaboration with other university for the realisation of ValorE (University of Milan) and Vigneto (Catholic University of Piacenza). This introduction foresee a description of the three types of chemical substances we evaluated with our EDSSs, evidencing the actual load in the European environment, the main regulations in Europe and Italy, the potential impacts on the environment. Then we describe the concept of environmental decision support system with a particular focus to its three main features: spatial representation of environmental variables and parameters, use of mathematical modelling and dynamicity. Then the introduction continues with a description of the evolution of environmental fate modelling through time and it ends with a short description of the next five chapters. Chemicals in agriculture Chemicals in agriculture relate to three main compartments: organic and mineral fertilisers, pesticides and veterinary pharmaceuticals; other chemical substances such as additives are frequently used in other sectors of the food production chain, but could be considered outside the direct agriculture sector. Organic and mineral fertilisers Use of organic and mineral fertilisers is intended to provide an adequate supply of all essential nutrients for a crop throughout the growing season. If the amount of any nutrient is limiting at any time, there is a potential for loss in production. As crop yields increase and as increasing amounts of nutrients are exported from the fields where crops are grown, the nutrient supply in the soil can become depleted unless it is supplemented through application of fertilizers. When fertilizers were introduced, they have been used to supply the primary nutrients nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K). In fields where primary nutrients are no longer the most limiting factor, fertilizers are used to supply secondary and micronutrients as well. Loads on the environment Use of fertilisers in Europe reached high levels during 1970s and 1980s for all countries and especially