Atrazine dispersion in soil

The dynamics of atrazine herbicide in the environment is controlled by various mechanisms including, transport, chemical and biological degradation, and adsorption to soil minerals (Figure 1). We used BRTSim to quantify the mass flow rate through these pathways for atrazine and its many byproducts along a vertical soil column for real ecohydrological boundary conditions in a number of experimental sites. Relative to the nitrogen N in the various subtances, the animation in Figure 2 shows the dynamics of the mass fraction of each chemical species and how these change in time and space over a simulation of 50 years. In particular, the top panel shows the instantaneous normalized precipitation and evapotranspiration (in black) and the atrazine applications (in red). From the left to the right, the lower panels show the total N in the aqueous and gaseous phases, the N mass fraction distribution in aqueous species, in adsorbed species, and in gaseous species. Comprehensive analyses of atrazine dynamics can be found in PUBLICATIONS.

Figure 1

Figure 2