Agicultural pesticides: atmospheric tracing and transformations

农业对加拿大经济（290亿美元）至关重要。大草原是加拿大乃至全球谷物和油籽产量最高的地区。不列颠哥伦比亚省的下弗雷泽河谷和奥肯那根河谷是加拿大浆果和水果的高产地区。这些农业区的农药使用量占加拿大42000吨农药使用量的78%。在国际上，旨在实现对人类和生态系统健康影响最小的高生产率的政策制定正在转向综合评估模型方法，从而有机会在各种规模上评估农业系统、农业环境政策和技术。农业系统面临着相当大的挑战，因为其过程涉及不同时空尺度上的水-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。这项研究的重点是推进过程知识，具体到管理和控制农药使用所需的土壤-作物-大气相互作用，这些农药使用可能对环境产生负面影响或被确定为可能的人类暴露源。在气候变化等一系列比农药控制更广泛的问题上确立加拿大的立场至关重要。大气中农药含量和检测到的农药和转化产品类型的长期变化为作为气候变化对农业部门压力的早期预警信号提供了新的机会。它还可以提供对生物多样性和土地利用变化的见解，例如与蜜蜂种群减少和生长季节的时间变化有关的新问题。我们的目标是对北美大气中农药水平的年度和季节变化进行评估，同时提高对大气运输途径（气体/颗粒分配）的理解。我们将继续在这些北美作物高产地区提供有效成分信息，以及很少监测的农药转化产物的时空尺度信息。

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.