The Danish Pesticide Leaching Assessment Programme. Monitoring results May 1999 - June 2004

In 1998, the Danish Parliament initiated the Danish Pesticide Leaching Assessment Programme (PLAP), an intensive monitoring programme aimed at evaluating the leaching risk of pesticides under field conditions. The Danish Government funded the first phase of the programme from 1998 to 2001, while the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries are funding a prolongation from 2002 to 2009.

The work was conducted by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS) and the National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) under the direction of a management group comprising Jeanne Kjær (GEUS), Walter Brüsch (GEUS), Ole Hørbye Jacobsen (DIAS), Preben Olsen (DIAS), Ruth Grant (NERI), Christian Ammitsøe (Danish Environmental Protection Agency) and Steen Marcher (Danish Environmental Protection Agency).

This report presents the results for the period May 1999–June 2004. Results covering part of the period (May 1999–June 2003) have been reported previously (Kjær et al., 2002, Kjær et al., 2003 and Kjær et al., 2004). The present report should therefore be seen as a continuation of previous reports with the main focus being on the leaching risk of pesticides applied during 2002.