CEH Pesticides: 1km Grid Maps for England and Wales

129 different pesticide active ingredients, including herbicides and fungicides, are mapped at a 1km resolution across England and Wales. This modelled product provides a snapshot of average annual application rates in kilograms per square kilometer between 2012 and 2016. Each active ingredient map is accompanied by a separate uncertainty layer quantifying confidence in the estimates.

Use Cases

• Assessing environmental exposure to specific pesticides based on geospatial application rates.
• Correlating pesticide use with crop types using the underlying CEH Land Cover Plus: Crops data.
• Prioritizing regions for sustainable farming interventions by identifying areas of high agrochemical application.
• Quantifying uncertainty in pesticide load estimates for risk assessment models.
• Establishing a spatial baseline for tracking changes in agricultural chemical usage over time.

Strengths

• Provides estimates for a specific number of 129 distinct pesticide active ingredients.
• Includes modelled uncertainty maps for each ingredient to quantify confidence levels.
• Built upon the authoritative CEH Land Cover Plus: Crops product, averaging data from 2015-2017.
• Funded by a specific research programme (NERC NE/N018125/1 ASSIST).

Limitations

• The dataset is marked as withdrawn on the primary platform (uk_data), indicating potential access or validity issues.
• Represents a static snapshot (2012-2016 average) and does not model explicit temporal variation within that period.
• Key metadata such as row count, specific license, and author are unavailable across all sources.

Provenance

Source

Environmental Information Data Centre, produced under the NERC/BBSRC ASSIST research programme.

Collection Method

Modelled estimates derived by multiplying crop-specific pesticide application rates by crop area from CEH Land Cover Plus: Crops.

Time Range

2012-2016 (average applications)

Freshness

Last updated metadata indicates 2026-04-16, but the core data represents a 2012-2016 average.

Geography

England and Wales at a 1km grid resolution.