Pharmaceutical Transport in Agricultural Soils
TERRECO Cluster A-06
Von 10/2010Projektleiter: Bernd Huwe, Stefan Peiffer, Yong Sik Ok, John Tenhunen
Mitarbeiter: Jong Yol Park
Abstract: The major objective of this study is to understand transport and fate of selected sulfonamide antibiotics in an agricultural region. Laboratory experiments, field experiments and discharge measurements of the target antibiotics have been conducted in order to describe the transport phenomena in combination with different numerical modeling programs.
The soil column experiment showed sorption coefficients and degradation rates which should be considered in the chosen simulation software. The above-mentioned experiment also proved that adsorption-desorption onto soil materials was strongly dependent on the soil structure. The estimated parameters will be quantitatively optimized with Hydrus-1D.
Several new types of information on the sulfonamide transport in agricultural systems was obtained from the field experiments. Rain events can change distribution of the antibiotics in agricultural soil layers. In particular, strong precipitation has been frequently observed during monsoon season, and the meteorological events can dramatically redistribute the antibiotics in crop fields. Runoff is one of main transport pathway to move materials into the stream network. In accordance with the field experiments, runoff generation was positively correlated to slope of agricultural land. It means that the agricultural area located on slopes can directly discharge a lot of sulfonamide antibiotic into the aquatic system. In the next study, different transport pathways in sloped areas will be examined and optimized with HydroGeoSphere. Until now, study of the discharge of the antibiotics at catchment level has not been completed. Theoretical discharge patterns of the sulfonamides will be described for the monsoon season using SWAT 2009.
Key words: sulfonamide antibiotics, transport, agricultural soil, Hydrus-1D, HydroGeoSphere, SWAT 2009
see also WP 2-11