Main conclusions and perspectives from the collective scientific assessment of the effects of plant protection products on biodiversity and ecosystem services along the land-sea continuum in France and French overseas territories.

Preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is critical for sustainable development and human well-being. However, an unprecedented erosion of biodiversity is observed and the use of plant protection products (PPP) has been identified as one of its main causes. In this context, at the request of the French Ministries responsible for the Environment, for Agriculture and for Research, a panel of 46 scientific experts ran a nearly 2-year-long (2020-2022) collective scientific assessment (CSA) of international scientific knowledge relating to the impacts of PPP on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The scope of this CSA covered the terrestrial, atmospheric, freshwater, and marine environments (with the exception of groundwater) in their continuity from the site of PPP application to the ocean, in France and French overseas territories, based on international knowledge produced on or transposable to this type of context (climate, PPP used, biodiversity present, etc.). Here, we provide a brief summary of the CSA's main conclusions, which were drawn from about 4500 international publications. Our analysis finds that PPP contaminate all environmental matrices, including biota, and cause direct and indirect ecotoxicological effects that unequivocally contribute to the decline of certain biological groups and alter certain ecosystem functions and services. Levers for action to limit PPP-driven pollution and effects on environmental compartments include local measures from plot to landscape scales and regulatory improvements. However, there are still significant gaps in knowledge regarding environmental contamination by PPPs and its effect on biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Perspectives and research needs are proposed to address these gaps.

The combination of chemical, structural, and functional indicators to evaluate the anthropogenic impacts on agricultural stream ecosystems.

Freshwater contamination by pesticides in agricultural landscapes is of increasing concern worldwide, with strong pesticide impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ultimately human health (drinking water, fishing). In addition, the excessively large number of substances, as well as their low - and temporally variable - concentrations in water, make the chemical monitoring by grab sampling very demanding and not fully representative of the actual contamination. Tools that integrate temporal variations and that are ecologically relevant are clearly needed to improve the monitoring of freshwater contamination and assess its biological effects. Here, we studied pesticide contamination and its biological impacts in 10 stream sections (sites) belonging to 3 agricultural catchments in France. In each site, we deployed a combination of pesticide integrative samplers, biocenotic indicators based on benthic macroinvertebrates, and functional indicators based on leaf litter decomposition and associated fungal communities. The 3 approaches largely proved complementary: structural and functional indicators did not respond equally to different agricultural impacts such as pesticide contamination (as revealed by integrative samplers), nutrients, or oxygen depletion. Combining chemical, structural, and functional indicators thus seems an excellent strategy to provide a comprehensive picture of agricultural impacts on stream ecosystems.

ARPEGES: A Bayesian Belief Network to Assess the Risk of Pesticide Contamination for the River Network of France.

Pesticides are priority concerns in aquatic risk assessment due to their widespread use, ongoing development of new molecules, and potential effects from short- and long-term exposures to aquatic life. Water quality assessments are also challenged by contrasting pesticide behaviors (e.g., mobility, half-life time, solubility) in different environmental contexts. Furthermore, monitoring networks are not well adapted to the pesticide media transfer dynamics and therefore fail at providing a reliable assessment of pesticides. We present here a Bayesian belief network that was developed in a cooperative process between researchers specializing in Bayesian modeling, soil sciences, agronomy, and diffuse pollutants to provide a tool for stakeholders to assess surface water contamination by pesticides. It integrates knowledge on dominant transfer pathways according to basin physical context and climate for different pesticides properties, such as half-life duration and affinity to organic C, to develop an assessment of risks of contamination for every watershed in France. The resulting model, ARPEGES (Analyse de Risque PEsticide pour la Gestion des Eaux de Surface; trans. Risk analysis of contamination by pesticides for surface water management), was developed in R. A user-friendly R interface was built to enable stakeholders to not only obtain ARPEGES' results, but also freely use it to test management scenarios. Though it is applicable to any chemical, its results are illustrated for S-Metolachlor, a pesticide that was widely used on cereals crops worldwide. In addition to providing contamination potential, ARPEGES also provides a way to diagnose its main explaining factors, enabling stakeholders to focus efforts in the most potentially affected basins, but also on the most probable cause of contamination. In this context, the Bayesian belief network allowed us to use information at different scales (i.e., regional contexts for climate, pedology at the basin scale, pesticide use at the municipality scale) to provide an expert assessment of the processes driving pesticide contamination of streams and the associated uncertainties. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:188-201. © 2020 SETAC.

RECOTOX, a French initiative in ecotoxicology-toxicology to monitor, understand and mitigate the ecotoxicological impacts of pollutants in socioagroecosystems.

RECOTOX is a cross-cutting initiative promoting an integrated research to respond to the challenges of monitoring, understanding, and mitigating environmental and health impacts of pesticides in agroecosystems. The added value of RECOTOX is to develop a common culture around spatial ecotoxicology including the whole chain of pressure-exposure-impact, while strengthening an integrated network of in natura specifically equipped sites. In particular, it promotes transversal approaches at relevant socioecological system scales, to capitalize knowledge, expertise, and ongoing research in ecotoxicology and, to a lesser extent, environmental toxicology. Thus, it will open existing research infrastructures in environmental sciences to research programs in ecotoxicology of pesticides.

Responses of chronically contaminated biofilms to short pulses of diuron. An experimental study simulating flooding events in a small river.

An experimental study was undertaken to highlight the potential ecotoxicological impact of the herbicide diuron on biofilms during flooding events in a small river (Morcille) in the Beaujolais vineyard area (France). We investigated the responses of chronically contaminated biofilms exposed to short-term pulses (3 h) of diuron. Biofilms were grown in indoor microcosms that were either non-contaminated or exposed to low-level chronic contamination, and not exposed, or exposed to single or double pulses of two environmental concentrations (7 and 14 microg L(-1)) of diuron. Exposure to pollution and its impact on biofilms were assessed by measuring pesticide concentrations in biofilms, biomass parameters (chl a, AFDW), community structure (using 18S and 16S rDNA gene analysis by DGGE, and HPLC pigment analysis to target eukaryotes, bacteria and photoautotrophs, respectively) and by performing a physiological test. Control biofilms displayed very low diuron concentrations, whereas the herbicide was found in the contaminated biofilms. Nevertheless, diuron concentrations were not higher in the pulsed biofilms than in the non-pulsed ones. AFDW and chl ain vivo fluorescence increased in both microcosms during the experiment and biomass was higher in chronically exposed biofilms than in control ones. The impact on biomass was higher for the control double-pulsed biofilms than for the non-pulsed ones. Carbon incorporation by the chronically exposed biofilms was greater during the first 28 days of growth than during the first 28 days of growth in the control biofilms. Both single and double pulses inhibited carbon incorporation of all biofilm communities, especially of the control ones. Short-term inhibition of photosynthesis was never significantly different in exposed and non-exposed biofilms. Few differences in the pigment structure were found between chronically exposed and control biofilms, but pulses impacted on the pigment structure of all biofilm communities. Bacterial structural differences were observed between single-pulsed and non-pulsed biofilms, but not between double-pulsed and non-pulsed biofilms. The different pulses affected the eukaryotic community structures of the control biofilms, but not of the chronically exposed ones. Unlike the bacterial communities, the control eukaryotic communities were structurally different from the chronically exposed ones. This preliminary experimental study indicates that exposure to environmental concentrations of diuron and other agricultural contaminants and further exposure to diuron can have measurable effects on small river biofilm communities. The effects of a pulsed acute exposure to diuron on biofilms depended on whether the biofilms had previously been exposed to the same stressors or not.