Key Facts

The Zwischenscholle aquifer is located in the Lower Rhine Embayment, Germany. The underground is made up of unconfined and semi-confined quaternary Rhine and Meuse sediments, mainly sandy and gravely. The aquifer base is the water impermeable Reuver clay. The aquifer thickness varies from a few meters in the southwest to 35 m in the northeast. The groundwater flows from southeast to northwest. Forests and agriculture are the primary land uses in this area. The typical crop rotation was sugar beet and winter wheat. Potatoes, oats, and maize were marginally cultivated. Due to a shallow water table depth and intensive agricultural land use in the area, the vulnerability of the aquifer to pesticide contamination was found to be very high. The Zwischenscholle aquifer is one of the aquifers in the world contaminated with atrazine, one of the most widely applied pesticides for weed control worldwide.

Agricultural field (crop land, grass land) & Forest

Pesticides

Soil & groundwater

Process

Flow of water and transport of pesticides in soils and groundwater.

Actions and expected results

• Test the impact of using EU-wide available data on soil and aquifer properties and land use on predictions of: groundwater table dynamics and pesticide concentrations in groundwater.

Challenges

• Comparison between simulated and measured pesticide concentrations is difficult since the dose and timing of pesticide applications are unknown.
• Smaller scale features are not represented in the large-scale simulation model (resolution 600x600m).

Partner involved