Agicultural pesticides: atmospheric tracing and transformations

农业对加拿大经济至关重要(290亿美元)。大草原是加拿大和全球谷物和油籽产量最高的地区。卑诗省的下弗雷泽山谷和奥卡纳根山谷是加拿大浆果和水果的高产产区。这些农业区占加拿大使用的42000吨杀虫剂总量的78%。为了在对人类和生态系统健康的影响最小的情况下实现高生产率的政策发展，国际上正在转向综合评估模型方法，这种方法使人们有机会在一系列尺度上评估农业系统和农业环境政策和技术。农业系统面临着相当大的挑战，因为这些过程涉及不同空间和时间尺度上的水-土壤-作物-大气相互作用，并受到气候变化、生物多样性、有限的自然资源、粮食生产、市场全球化、人口和经济增长的影响。这项研究的重点是促进特定于土壤-作物-大气相互作用的过程知识，这些相互作用是管理和控制可能对环境产生负面影响或被确定为可能的人类接触来源的农药使用所需的。这对于确立加拿大在许多问题上的立场至关重要，这些问题不仅仅是农药控制，如气候变化。检测到的农药大气水平和种类以及转化产品的长期变化提供了一个新的机会，可以作为气候变化对农业部门压力的早期预警信号。它还可能提供对生物多样性和土地利用变化的洞察，例如与蜜蜂数量下降和生长季节时间变化相关的新问题。我们的目标是评估北美大气中杀虫剂水平的年度和季节变化，以及更好地了解大气传输的途径(气体/颗粒分配)。我们不仅将继续提供有效成分信息，还将在时间和空间尺度上提供这些北美作物高产地区很少监测的杀虫剂转化产品的信息。

Agriculture is critical to the Canadian economy (>$29 billion). The prairies are the highest crop production region for grains and oil seeds in Canada and globally. The Lower Fraser Valley and Okanagan Valley in BC are high production areas for berries and fruit in Canada. These agricultural regions represent 78% of the total 42000 tonnes of pesticides used in Canada. Policy development to allow for high production rates with minimium impacts on human and ecosystem health is shifting internationally to an Integrated Assessment Modelling approach which allows for the opportunity to assess agricultural systems and agri-environmental policies and technologies over a range of scales. Agricultural systems possess considerable challenges as the processes cover water-soil-crop-atmospheric interactions on different spatial and temporal scales and are impacted by climate change, biodiversity, limited natural resources, food production, globalization of markets, population and economic growth. This research focuses on advancing process knowledge specific to the soil-crop-atmospheric interactions required for management and control of pesticide usage that may have negative environmental impacts or identified as a probable source of human exposure. It is critical to establishing Canada's position on a number of issues much broader than just pesticide control such as climate change. Long-term shifts in pesticide atmospheric levels and types of pesticides and transformation products detected offer a new opportunity to be used as early warning signs of the pressures on the agricultural sector from climate change. It also may provide insight into biodiversity and land-use changes such as the emerging issues related to declining bee populations and time shifts in the growing season. We aim to provide an assessment of annual and seasonal shifts in atmospheric levels of pesticides in North America along with improved understanding of pathways of atmospheric transport (gas/particle partitioning). We will continue to provide not only active ingredient information but also information on rarely monitored transformation products of pesticides on a temporal and spatial scale in these high crop production North American regions.