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Pesticide Fate and Transport LaboratoryWatanabe Hirozumi (Ph.D, Professor)
Backbrounds and interests
Hirozumi
Watanabe
has
received
his
Ph.D.
in
agricultural
and biological engineering in1999 from University
of California, Davis. After
working as a post doctoral
fellow at National Institute for Agro-environmental
Sciences, he joined
Tokyo
University of Agriculture and Technology since 2000.
He is currently
appointed
to be an associate professor in the department of
International,
Environmental
and Agricultural Sciences and teaches several courses
in both
undergraduate and
graduate programs.
His research area focuses on monitoring and modeling of pesticide fate and transport in agricultural environments. The major objectives of the current research activities are development and assessment of the good agricultural practices for reducing the environmental exposure risks associated with pesticide use in agricultural production. 1. Monitoring of pesticide fate and transport
Recently,
he
has
been
mainly
working
for
rice paddy
environments for multiple scales from lysimeter and
plot scales and to
watershed scale. Pesticide fate and transport studies
in lysimeter
scale have
been conducted with several sizes from micro-paddy
lysimeters to large
size permanent
set lysemeters. Especially, micro-paddy lysimeter
experiments have been
proven
to be useful in inexpensive and rapid determination of
pesticide fate
parameters, which can be used parallel in the
modeling. Number of plot
studies
has been done last 10 years to investigate fate and
transport of rice
herbicides, fungicide, and insecticides. Also, the
Best Management
Practices
(BMPs) or Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) for
reducing pesticide
losses from
paddy rice field including Water Holding Period and
Excess Water
Storage Depth has
been evaluated and recommended. Watershed scale
monitoring was
conducted in
about 100 ha paddy rice watershed during 2002-2005.
The fate and
transport characteristics
of rice herbicides in paddy watershed have been
reviled and also, some
BMPs
were recommended to reduce herbicide losses from rice
paddy.
2. Modeling of pesticide fate and transport
Modeling
of
pesticide
fate
and
transport
has
been
major focus of his research carrier. He has developed
a simulation
model for
pesticide fate and transport in vegetative filter
strips (PRVSF) during
his Ph.
D. In Japan,
he
developed a simulation model for pesticide fate and
transport in paddy
field
(PCPF-1) in 1998 and the model is validated and
applied number of rice
herbicides used under Japanese and Italian conditions.
PCPF-1 has been
modified
and validated to watershed scale recently.
Probabilistic exposure risk
assessments using field data and PCPF model for
evaluating GAPs in
reduction of
pesticides losses from rice paddy has been presented
in international
conferences and journal papers.
3. Current progress and Future aspects
Investigation
of
Good
Agricultural
Practices
for
controlling
pesticide
runoff from paddy field through the probabilistic
assessment
on pesticide exposure associated with local
agricultural management and
hydrologic condition is in progress.
For fate and transport studies in paddy field, a joint project with Japanese biologists for investigating the eco-toxicological effects of insecticides on dragonfly larvae in rice paddy environments has been also in progress. For international cooperation through pesticide monitoring and modeling, the application of the monitoring and modeling procedures developed in the lab to other international sites in Asia, Europe and the US is of our interest. A plot scale monitoring and modeling study in tropical rice paddy in Taiwan has been in progress. A project for developing an experimental devises and methodology for pesticide runoff from upland fields using a rainfall simulator in Thailand and pesticide fate and transport modeling in Sacramento River Basin has been started recently. |
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