Assessment of Groundwater Contamination by Terbuthylazine Using Vadose Zone Numerical Models. Case Study of Valencia Province (Spain).

Terbuthylazine is commonly used as an herbicide to control weeds and prevent non-desirable grow of algae, fungi and bacteria in many agricultural applications. Despite its highly negative effects on human health, environmental modeling of this kind of pesticide in the vadose zone till reaching groundwater is still not being done on a regular basis. This work shows results obtained by two mathematical models (PESTAN and PRZM-GW) to explain terbuthylazine behavior in the non-saturated zone of a vertical soil column.