Pesticide Mitigation Prioritization Model (PMPM) - Environmental Release Tool and Results

Pesticides continue to pose a significant threat to the environment, endangering both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. However, effectively targeting and reducing pesticide toxicity in the environment faces several challenges. These challenges include evaluating toxicity over large areas, obtaining precise spatiotemporal data on pesticide use, assessing cumulative toxicity, and identifying the health and economic impacts of pesticide application sites. To address these challenges, we present the Environmental Release Tool, a sub-tool of the Pesticide Mitigation Prioritization Model. This tool aims to advance the understanding in these four areas and facilitate pesticide management by promoting collaboration between experts and non-experts. It employs a framework that generates user-friendly graphical and tabular summaries of pesticide impact information, contextualized within management opportunities.

While the Pesticide Mitigation Prioritization Model can be applied across the United States, its utility is particularly valuable in California. This is because the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) hosts the most comprehensive pesticide use data globally. The CDPR's Pesticide Use Reports (PUR) database records agricultural pesticide applications on a daily time step and at the scale of one square mile (2.6 square kilometers) per application site. Leveraging this extensive database, we have integrated it directly into the Pesticide Mitigation Prioritization Model. This integration enables us to rapidly quantify the applied pesticide toxicity by chemical, source, and watershed across California, typically within seconds to minutes.

Methods
Refer to PMPM_EnvironmentalRelease_UserGuide.pdf for details about data collection and processing.