Digital mapping of pesticides bioconcentration by integrating remote sensing techniques and plant uptake model

Although pesticides have been widely used worldwide to enhance crop yield and product quality, most pesticides are harmful to the environment and human health. Plants absorb pesticides mainly from air and soil. Therefore, the soil-plant pathway is essential for pesticide absorption. Bioconcentration factor (BCF) has extensively been applied to evaluate potential plant contamination by pesticides from soil. Hence, this study developed a simplified plant transpiration-based plant uptake model (PT-model) to estimate plant pesticides’ BCF from soil based on plant transpiration. Remote sensing techniques were employed to generate spatiotemporal continuous plant transpiration via evapotranspiration. Pesticide BCF mapping was achieved by integrating PT-model with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) remotely sensed data. The results were compared with a verified model driven by relative humidity and air temperature (RA-model), which has been confirmed by findings from previous studies. The estimated BCF was within the boundaries of the RA-model, indicating the simulation’s overall acceptability. In this study, the BCF temporal trend estimated by the proposed method agreed with the RA-model assimilating meteorology datasets, while the spatial distribution was partially inconsistent. Overall, the proposed method generates the spatiotemporal patterns of pesticide BCF with relatively consistent results supported by previous records and findings.