Water quality management in agriculture: The case of Lombardy - North Italy

Abstract

The development of sustainable agricultural systems characterised by technologies and strategies of crop protection able to safeguard the groundwater resources and aquatic ecosystems has become one of the themes of the modern agriculture. The objective of this paper is to delineate the procedures, the methods and the models used in Lombardy, North Italy in order to safeguard water quality in agricultural ecosystems. For nitrogen an accurate evaluation of aquifer vulnerability has been made considering soil and subsoil chemical and physical parameters. For pesticide a decision support system integrating leaching models and GIS techniques together with census agricultural data has been applied to the region in order to produce vulnerability and hazard map. © 2006 Springer.