Development and application of a dynamic in-river agrochemical fate and transport model for simulating behavior of rice herbicide in urbanizing catchment

This study aimed to develop and validate a Dynamic in-River Agrochemical Fate and Transport (DRAFT) model simulating one-dimensional advective and dispersive pesticide transport processes under unsteady flow regime in a riverine system. The DRAFT model was coupled with two other modeling components, the PCPF-B model and the land use based tank model, which simulated hydrological/pesticide process in paddy fields and hydrological process in other land uses such as city, agricultural field and forest, respectively. The PCPF-B/DRAFT model was fed with the spatial information of the target catchment by incorporating the Geographical Information System (GIS). For the model validation, a full catchment monitoring data of a rice herbicide, mefenacet, along the Kose River, Fukuoka, Japan was utilized. After model calibration, hourly river discharge and daily mefenacet concentration were simulated by the PCPF-B/DRAFT model at individual observed points of the Kose River and model performance was evaluated by graphical assessment and multiple statistical indices (e.g. Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies were 0.84–0.86 for streamflow and 0.16–0.72 for herbicide, respectively). The predicted mefenacet concentrations were strongly affected by: (1) water managements practiced in rice fields and (2) intensive rainfall events. The former concentrations were characterized by broad peak while for the latter the peak concentration was sharp and narrow. We used the PCPF-B/DRAFT model to further evaluate the applications of 7 days of water holding period after herbicide application in paddy fields, which was shown to effectively reduce the total loss of mefenacet from 18.9 to 12.8% of applied mass. Consequently, the broad peak concentrations of mefenacet in the Kose River decreased remarkably while the water management practice was less effective to reduce the sudden and sharp peak concentration resulting from intensive rainfall events.