UKCEH Land Cover plus: Fertilisers and Pesticides

By combining information on cropping patterns from UkCEH Land Cover^® plus: Crops with national survey data on pesticide and fertiliser use, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology has created two updated data products: UkCEH Land Cover^® plus Fertilisers and UKCEH Land Cover^® plus Pesticides.

These maps estimate average fertiliser and pesticide applications over the past two decades for the whole of England, and Great Britain respectively. They offer a unique dataset, capturing variation in agrochemical application rates over time and at fine spatial resolution, over national scales. These data have been developed to aid UKCEH research into the environmental impacts of agriculture and to help develop sustainable farming solutions.

For academic research/education only, UkCEH Land Cover^® plus Fertilisers and UKCEH Land Cover^® plus Pesticides are available free to users of EDINA, specifically the Digimap Environment section.

UKCEH Land Cover^® plus Fertilisers

UKCEH Land Cover^® plus Fertilisers maps estimate average, total, annual, application of manufactured Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. This produce builds on the previous UKCEH Land Cover plus: Fertilisers 2010-2015 (England) product by including more recent years, providing a map per year instead of a long-term average and updating the methods to account for the effects of climate and soils on fertiliser application rates.

Technical features

Spatial resolution: 1 grid cells km
Timespan: Annual maps of total application for each of 2015-2021
Units: kg of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium / 1km²
Supply Format: GeoTIFF
Spatial extent: England

Land cover map plus fertiliser showing nitrogen in England

Example of 3 maps of England estimating application of 3 fertilisers

Method

Anonymised data from the Defra sponsored British Survey of Fertiliser Practice (2015-2021) was used to derive total annual application of manufactured fertilisers for each crop type per survey location.

A spatial interpolation model was used to predict applications for every 1km grid cell in England and anonymise survey locations.

The total application for each 1km square was then derived using crop areas from UKCEH Land Cover^® plus: Crops for the relevant year.

Uncertainty maps are presented alongside the fertiliser application maps to quantify the level of confidence in estimated application rates.

Potential Uses

Prediction of environmental impacts, such as modelling agrochemical runoff, eutrophication and soil health.
Planning and environmental protection, such as catchment sensitive farming, modelling nutrient budgets and estimates of gaseous emissions.
Supporting the sustainable agricultural industry, providing data on patterns of crop inputs.

UKCEH Land Cover^® plus Pesticides

UKCEH Land Cover^® plus Pesticides combines UKCEH Land Cover^® plus: Crop maps with Pesticide Utilisation Survey data to map average, annual pesticide applications across England, Wales and Scotland at a 1km resolution for 162 active ingredients.

Technical features

Scale: 1km resolution
Units: kg of active ingredient / 1km²/year
Supply Format: GeoTIFF
Coverage: England, Wales and Scotland
Period: A snapshot of average applications between 2012 and 2017
Ingredients: Data are available for 162 active ingredients

Method

County-level data from the Pesticide Usage Survey (2012-2017) was summarised as annual total applications per crop per county per year.

Average annual application rates for each active ingredient (or combination) were modelled as a function of the crop to which they are applied and their location.

Using this model, estimated application rates were produced for each 1km square in England, Wales and Scotland using information on the crops grown from UKCEH Land Cover® plus: Crop maps (2015-2017). Hence, pesticide application was mapped even for counties where data was missing for some years on some crops.

Uncertainty maps are presented alongside each active ingredient map to quantify the level of confidence in the estimated application rates. Temporal variation in pesticide application is reflected in the uncertainly maps.

Potential Uses

Detecting the impact of pesticide use on wildlife population trends.
Prediction of the environmental fate of active ingredients and exposure risk to key groups (e.g. pollinating insects).
Modelling agrochemical runoff.
Water quality management in support of the Water Framework Directive.
Targeting management interventions such as pesticide stewardship.
Wider monitoring of pesticide use across landscapes in support of improved regulation.

Case studies

Click to read: Approach used to assess community responses to pesticide exposure

Linking long-term population changes in UK wildlife to agrochemical use is crucial to the sustainable and long term management of our agricultural systems. Agro-chemicals like pesticides are vital for the majority of farms, and this dependence means that understanding their long term impacts on native wildlife gives us the potential to manage their use to minimise unforeseen impacts.

In previous work, we have identified long-term impacts as a result of the use of the neonicotinoid pesticide seed treatment on wild bees (Woodcock/Isaac et al Nature Comms. 2016;7:12459). This work linked long-term national scale distributional data collected by the Bees, Ants and Wasps Recording Scheme to information on the spatial and temporal variation in neonicotinoids use on oilseed rape. It showed that bee populations were less likely to persist from one year to the next in areas exposed to higher neonicotinoid dose rates.

Importantly, this study demonstrated the value of understanding both historical and current pesticide use patterns. CEH Land Cover® plus Pesticides dataset will provide high resolution pesticide use data for the future, allowing us to understand quickly the possible impacts and risks of ongoing agro-chemical use.

This understanding could help us identify early where problems may be occurring, allowing management/mitigation measures to be implemented to protect the natural environment, but also enabling farmers to continue to use important pesticides by changing the way they are used to minimise risk.

Linking multi-species population changes to CEH Land Cover® plus Pesticides dataset will provide an opportunity for ongoing assessments of new pesticides once they have been licensed for use, similar to the current approach to pharmaceuticals. ‘Pesticidovigilance’ (a phrase coined by Milner & Boyd 2017 Science, 357, 1232-1234) would depend on new data sets that actually predict pesticide use, allowing us to understand in detail both when products are safe and when there may be unforeseen impacts on native wildlife.

Click to read: PhD in fungicide drug resistance

Environmental drivers of azole-resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus and its relevance to human health

Aspergillus fumigatus is a ubiquitous fungus found in the air and soil, which plays an important role in recycling decaying organic matter into its constituent nutrients.
Humans inhale 100s of airborne A. fumigatus spores daily that are cleared by our innate immune system, but some individuals experience allergic reactions or lung infections from the spores.
The most severe form of disease, Invasive Aspergillosis (IA), occurs in immunocompromised individuals.
Aspergillosis is treated with drugs containing azole compounds, which are also a key component in many agricultural fungicide sprays.
Individuals are increasingly presenting with azole-resistant aspergillosis infections despite no prior treatment with medical azoles, which suggests environmental acquisition.
Environmental air and soil samples collected from across the UK will be cultured for A. fumigatus and isolates will be tested for resistance to a panel of medical and agricultural azoles. The location of any resistant isolates will be overlaid with CEH Land Cover® plus Fertilisers and Pesticides data to identify “hotspots” of resistance and correlation with azole spraying.

Photos: Mould cultured from an air sampler and a sampler near a manure pile.

Map: Locations in the UK that air samples were collected from on Summer Solstice (A) and Autumn Equinox (B) in 2018. Blue dots denote air samplers that did not grow A. fumigatus colonies, and green dots denote air samplers that did.

Obtaining a licence

UKCEH’s Land Cover® plus Fertilisers and Pesticides datasets are available for free to those who license Land Cover® plus Crops data.

Please outline your licence requirements by filling in our web form. For more information, please contact the Data Licensing Team:

Email: datalicensing@ceh.ac.uk

Web form

Please fill in our form to request map data