CEH Land Cover plus: Pesticides 2012-2017 (England, Scotland and Wales)

CEH Land Cover plus: Pesticides maps annual average pesticide applications across England, Wales and Scotland. The product provides application estimates for 162 different active ingredients including herbicides, insecticides, molluscicides and fungicides. It is produced at a 1km resolution with units of kg active ingredient applied per year, averaged between 2012 and 2017. Pesticide application rates (kg/km2/yr) are calculated for each of the crops grown in each 1km square, using information from CEH Land Cover® Plus: Crops 2015, 2016 and 2017 to determine where each crop is grown. Pesticide application data is provided by the Pesticide Usage Survey. Uncertainty maps are produced alongside each active ingredient map to quantify the level of confidence in the estimated applications. Uncertainty is quantified using the distribution of each parameter estimate obtained from the modelling method and is expressed relative to the total application. The product builds upon the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) Land Cover® Plus: Crops product.

These maps were created under the NERC funded ASSIST (Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems) project to enable exploration of the impacts of agrochemical usage on the environment, enabling farmers and policymakers to implement better, more sustainable agricultural practices.