1. FOOTPRINT
Functional Tools for Pesticide Risk Assessment and Management
A special focus on FOOTPRINT environmental risk indicators
Igor Dubus, former FOOTPRINT coordinator, now Head of FOOTWAYS
Working group meeting on "Pesticide Statistics", 14 October 2009, Poznan

2. What was FOOTPRINT?
A 3.5-year project which was funded by the European Commission as part of FP6
Jan June 2009, 15 partners, 9 Member States
A research project with very applied outcomes to support policy initiatives
Water Framework Directive
91/414/EEC and the new regulation
The Thematic Strategy
Common Agricultural Policy (cross compliance)

3. What have we developed? 3 software tools ("the FOOTPRINT tools")
which provide an assessment of the risk of transfer of pesticides to water resources (surface water and groundwater) for any location or territory in Europe
which are based on state-of-the-art research models and science
which can be deployed anywhere in Europe
which can be used by all pesticide stakeholders, from policy- and decision-makers through to risk assessors and managers, right down to farmers
Each of the 3 tools allow users to:
i) identify the dominant pathways and sources of pesticide contamination in the agricultural landscape.
ii) estimate levels of pesticide concentrations entering surface water and groundwater systems.
iii) make recommendations on how to reduce the pesticide contamination in water resources.

4. 3 tools, 3 scales, 3 user communities
FOOT-NES
National and EU scale
EU and MS policy- and decision-makers, Ministries, pesticide registration authorities
FOOT-CRS
Catchment and regional scale
‘Water quality’ managers, i.e. regional/local authorities, water agencies, water companies
FOOT-FS
Farm scale
Agricultural advisers and farmers
All 3 tools share the same methodology and are coherent across scales

5. Methodology used 1. Development of agro-environmental scenarios
Characterise all agro-pedo-climatic conditions for locations where pesticides are used in the EU (!)
1. Development of agro-environmental scenarios
Deploy the best research models to estimate the fate of a hundred pesticides in these thousands of scenarios (!)
2. Modelling
Integrate all modelling results in
simple-to-use software tools
3. Tool development
Start evaluating the tools at their scale of application
4. Evaluation

6. Developing agro-environmental scenarios for the whole of the EU27
Objective: to provide an extensive characterisation of European
agro-pedo-climatic conditions in which pesticides are applied

7. FOOTPRINT agro-environmental scenarios
FOOTPRINT climate zones
CORINE NUTS level 2 statistics
European Soil geographic database 1:1,000,000
16 climates
264 FOOTPRINT soil types
42 crops
~ 100,000 FOOTPRINT agro-environmental scenarios
Combined Climate/NUTS2/CORINE 2000/soil type polygons

8. Ca. 100 reference pesticides Environmental indicators
The FOOTPRINT concept
Ca. 100 reference pesticides
MACRO
drainage, leaching
PRZM
runoff, erosion
Environmental indicators

9. Environmental indicators
The FOOTPRINT concept
Koc, DT50
Giant database of
modelling results
Environmental indicators

10. Some screenshots of the farm-scale tool

11. Some screenshots of the farm-scale tool

12. Some screenshots of the spatial tools

13. The issue of data availability
The FOOTPRINT tools have been designed to be operational even if detailed cropping and usage data are not available (which is nearly always the case)
If you have detailed cropping, usage or sales data, you can load them in the tools
In situations where you have limited or no data, the tools allow you to adopt work-arounds
Adoption of standard crop protection practices for crops (could be spatially referenced)
Random spatial distribution of pesticide applications onto crops
Percentage of crops treated

14. The FOOTPRINT environmental indicators

15. What do FOOTPRINT indicators account for?
Climate
Landscape elements
Equipment
Land management
Products
Crop
Soil

16. The FOOTPRINT environmental indicators
Important preamble: FOOTPRINT indicators only cover aquatic risks
Groundwater (via leaching)
Surface water (via drift, drainage, runoff and erosion)
The FOOTPRINT indicators
incorporate all possible influences on pesticide fate (climate, crop, soil, management options, landscape elements, pesticide properties)
results from the deployment of the best research models
The FOOTPRINT indicators originate from those used for years in registration
they rely on a comparison between likely concentrations in the environment and (effects concentrations and/or legal thresholds)
We've improved the approach by providing greater realism to the estimation of concentrations

17. FOOTPRINT indicators in practiceGW
Leaching
Drinking water legal thresholds
Average conc.
<>
Runoff
Erosion
Drainage
Drift
Look-up tables SW
Percentile conc.
FOOTPRINT PPDB
Effects conc. for each pesticide OR
Drinking water legal thresholds
Percentile conc.
<>
Percentile conc.
TER
Percentile conc.

18. The FOOTPRINT indicators are already validated
The concentrations in water are estimated using state-of-the-art models which have been improved over the last 25 years
The TER approach used in FOOTPRINT
has been used by DG Sanco, EFSA and all MS registration authorities for ca. 20 years
are the results of discussions between leading experts in the field of risk assessment
FOOTPRINT has facilitated the use of the TER approach
by providing a comprehensive database of pesticide properties
by enabling the detailed prediction of pesticide environmental fate for any location in Europe

19. The key strength of FOOTPRINT
Functional software tools to calculate all the indicators will be made available in the near future
For different scales
For different end users
For all Member States

20. How can FOOTPRINT support the Thematic Strategy ?
Regulation on the placing of PPP on the market (revising Directive 91/414/EEC) COM(2006) 388 final
Framework Directive on the sustainable use of Pesticides COM(2006) 373 final
Revision of Directive 2006/42/EC on Machinery COM(2008) 535 final
Regulation on the collection of statistics on PPP
COM(2006) 778 final
Work done by the FP7 TEAMPEST project on how FOOTPRINT indicators can support the Thematic Strategy in practice
-> Workshop on Monday in Uppsala, Sweden

21. Beyond FOOTPRINT FOOTPRINT finished on 30 June 2009
The support of methodologies and tools developed in European projects after the end of the funding is a key issue
The matter has been resolved in the case of FOOTPRINT
The FOOTPRINT coordinator and the leading scientist created the company FOOTWAYS on 1 June 2009
To provide long-term support, training and maintenance of the FOOTPRINT tools (subject to project partners' approval)
To propose new tools which go beyond FOOTPRINT and which meet the exact needs of stakeholders and end-users in all MS
FOOTWAYS Pro
a new online risk assessment platform which can be fully customised to your needs
Ideally suited to support policy implementation in the MS

22. FOOTWAYS objectives To be a common reference
for risk evaluators AND risk managers
for the agricultural AND environmental sectors
for all European countries
To provide turn-key solutions which serve all actors (policy- and decision-makers, risk assessors, risk managers, water specialists and the farming community)
To support all EU and MS policy initiatives in the field of pesticides
Framework Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides
Regulation for registration
WFD and its daughter directives
To bring together in one group the expertise of European leading experts in the field of pesticide risk assessment, environmental indicators and decision-support tools

23. Where are we going? FOOTPRINT Nationally-resolved tools
Fr. Dir. Sust. Use Pesticides
FOOTPRINT
National
registration
Thematical tools
registration, indicators, water bodies, catchment management, research, farm DSS
Cross
compliance
WFD
REACH
Other threats to EU water resources
Integration of FOOTPRINT technology in other tools
Other risk aspects and associated indicators
Farm DSS, link with databases, link with existing national and EU systems
soil, human exposure, birds, bee, food consumers
Nitrate, biocides, human pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicines

24. In summary
The European funded project FOOTPRINT has developed 3 software tools which allow all stakeholders to undertake pesticide risk assessments in a simple way
As part of this work, state-of-the-art aquatic risk indicators have been developed and are used to drive the FOOTPRINT evaluations
The FOOTPRINT initiative will be actively supported by FOOTWAYS which proposes new turn-key tools adapted to policy implementation in all Member States

25. Acknowledgements www.eu-footprint.org
The funding of the FOOTPRINT project
by the European Commission
through its Sixth Framework Programme
is gratefully acknowledged