Mapping agricultural use of pesticides to enable research and environmental health actions in Belgium

Given the many public health and environmental impacts associated with the use of pesticides, comprehensive pesticide application data are a high priority for environmental and health professionals, government agencies, and community groups in Wallonia (Belgium). In that context, geographic information system (GIS) approaches for mapping estimates of agricultural pesticide use were developed in the present study. Data on pesticide application rates and high-resolution annual datasets of the geographic distribution of crops were used to complete this analysis in Wallonia over the period 2015–2017. The method was implemented in Python in order to allow easy update and improvements of maps, or to segment maps by individual pesticides, chemical groups of pesticides (e.g. insecticides, herbicides), etc. Linked databases were created to classify, select, and possibly weight AIs according to specific requests and criteria. The results provide a first map of agricultural pesticide use in Wallonia, which depicts the best picture up to now of their geographic distribution. Maps of fungicides, herbicides, and plant growth regulators showed quite similar spatial patterns as the map of the combination of all pesticides. In contrast, the insecticide map showed a specific pattern related almost exclusively to dwarf-tree orchards in some municipalities in northern Wallonia. This research work is a preliminary result on the spatial characterization of agricultural pesticide use in Wallonia and give a valuable basis for research and environmental health actions in Belgium. Forthcoming developments will focus on exposure characterization to agricultural pesticides using GIS models. Using this information, policymakers will able to detect potential priority zones and take action to check and reduce agricultural pesticide loads in the environment.