Leaching Calculator

The leachability concept which is implemented in this tool represents an advanced way to estimate mobility. Leachability is defined as the predicted potential of a chemical to leach through an unsaturated soil profile of 1 m thickness under worst-case pedo-climatic boundary conditions [1]. Adsorption to soil (Koc) combined with degradation in the soil matrix (DegT50 according to [2]) were considered as the main drivers for the transport of substances through soil. Based on the percentage of the substance leached to a soil depth of 1 m as a f unction of the substance amount at the soil surface the following metric for mobility is proposed.

The leaching is calculated with the freely available FOCUS-PELMO 6.6.4 [3] for a set of 41 DT50 by 21 KOC combinations (861 combinations). This is done for the 9 locations defined in the FOCUS framework [1,4] for a simulated time of 120 years. For each location the 80th percentile of annual percentage leached mass at a depth of 100 cm is calculated and the average over all locations is taken. The table containing the resulting leaching percentages is stored in lookup_table.txt and can be obtained via pressing the button "Copy Lookup Table to Clipboard".