Mapping pesticide contamination potential

Groundwater contamination by agricultural chemicals is a major environmental pollution issue nation-wide. The regulatory agencies of towns and counties face the problem of finding a methodology for assessing the ground-water contamination potential of a large number of agricultural pesticides. Because of the spatial nature of the problem and the limited data availability for comprehensive pesticide movement models, a contamination potential index was employed for preliminary assessment. A specially designed geographic information system was used to create ground-water contamination likelihood maps for a 1500 km² area. The results suggest that this methodology can be used successfully for evaluating the relative contamination potential of a large number of pesticides over large areas with limited input data. A tentative approach for using this method for monitoring and registration of pesticides is also discussed.