VULPES WEB, a user-friendly web software for the evaluation of groundwater vulnerability to pesticides at territorial level

The groundwater VULnerability to PESticide software system (VULPES) is a user-friendly, GIS-based and client-server software developed to identify vulnerable areas to pesticides at regional level making use of pesticide fate models. It is a Decision Support System developed as a web application software aimed to assist the public policy makers to investigate areas sensitive to plant protection products in order to propose limitations of use or mitigation measures. VULPES works at NUTS 2 level identifying the so-called Uniform Geographical Unit (UGU) which are areas characterised by the same agro-environmental conditions (soil type, meteorology, irrigation amounts). In each UGU it applies the PELMO or the PEARL model (according to user’s choice) obtaining the 80th percentile of the substance concentration at 1 meter depth; then VULPES creates a vulnerability map in shapefile format which classifies the outputs comparing them with the lower threshold set to the legal limit concentration in groundwater (0.1 μg/l). VULPES allows making ad-hoc modifications to several input data, such as active ingredients physical-chemical properties, crop or soil parameters in order to address user’s needs.