A pesticide data and mapping toolkit for pollinator research and conservation

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

1:30 PM – 1:42 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 212

Presenting Author(s)

Margaret Douglas

Assistant Professor
Dickinson College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Co-Author(s)

BP

Baisley Paige

Dickinson College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
SS

Sara Soba

Dickinson College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
MK

Melanie Kammerer

USDA-ARS
University Park, Pennsylvania
Eric V. Lonsdorf

Lead Scientist
University of Minnesota
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Christina M. Grozinger

Publius Vergilius Maro Professor
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania

Wild and managed pollinators are essential to food production and the function of natural ecosystems; however, their populations are threatened by multiple stressors including pesticide use. Because pollinator species can travel hundreds to thousands of meters to forage, it is important to evaluate drivers of pollinator decline at the landscape scale. However, scientists’ and conservationists’ ability to do this has been limited by a lack of accessible data on pesticide use at relevant spatial scales and in toxicological units meaningful to pollinators. We synthesized information from several large, publicly available datasets on pesticide use, land use, and toxicity to generate novel datasets describing pesticide use by active ingredient (kg, 1997-2017) and aggregate insecticide load (kg and honey bee lethal doses, 1997-2014) for state-crop combinations in the contiguous U.S. Furthermore, by linking pesticide datasets with land-use data, we describe a method to map pesticide indicators at spatial scales relevant to pollinator research and conservation. Finally, we share outcomes from using these data in several test cases, and identify key limitations of available pesticide datasets that point to an urgent need for enhanced pesticide reporting.