A DSS for the dynamical assessment and mapping of the groundwater vulnerability: the pesticide and the nitrate fate tools

This work presents two web-based, freely-available dynamical tools for the assessment and the mapping of the groundwater vulnerability to both pesticides and nitrate, within the geospatial Decision Support system (s-DSS) LandSupport (www.landsupport.eu).The pesticide fate tool simulates the transport of reactive solutes, i.e., pesticides, and maps the percentage of pollutant mass that reaches the groundwater depth within a user defined time-interval. The tool is based on the extended transfer function model (TFM-ext) and its main inputs are: the soil and, eventually, the vadose zone physical and hydrological properties, the climate, the groundwater table depth, the investigated crop and its management (sowing and harvesting dates, pesticides doses and time of application).The nitrate fate tool simulates the crop growth dynamics and assess the transport of nitrate through the unsaturated zone till the groundwater table depth. The output maps represent the number of years for the arrival to the groundwater of the 50% of the mass of nitrate leachate from the root zone. The tool is based on the coupling of the dynamical crop-growth ARMOSA model and of the TFM-ext model and its main inputs are: the type of crop and/or crop-rotation and related managements (tillage, irrigation, fertilization and residues), the soil physical and hydrological properties, the climate and the groundwater table depth.Eventually, both tools were extended using the COMPSs programming framework that allows to parallelize the execution of multiple model runs.The work presents the implementations of both tools for different case studies across three European regions (Campania Region-IT, Marchfeld Region-AT, Zala County-HU), characterized by different spatial scales, pedo-climatic conditions and land-use, showing some examples of applications in support of local farmers, public authorities and environmental planners for the Water, Pesticides and Nitrate Directive applications.