Contamination of surface water by pesticides as a function of soil use in the Agudo watershed, RS

Abstract

This work was accomplished with the intention of quantifying the presence of pesticide molecules in surface waters of three landscape units (LU) with different usage configurations in the Agudo watershed of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Two semiautomatic water collectors were installed at the stream of each LU, from which samples were collected during rain over three stages of the tobacco growing season: seedling transplant, tobacco plants with 6-10 expanded leaves, and at harvest. Imidacloprid, atrazine, simazine, and clomazone compounds were quantified by High Performance Liquid Chromatography with Ultraviolet Detector (HPLC-UV). Chlorpyrifos, flumetralin and iprodione were analyzed by Gas Chromatography with Electron Capture Detector (GC-ECD), but these compounds were not detected in the samples. The sampling points where the LU was configured with both the presence of tobacco crops and reduced gallery forest, showed at least one pesticide compound in a sampling time. No pesticide was detected in the LU, which is completely covered with permanent vegetation or with gallery forest protecting the water courses.