Clusters for the regional evaluation and analysis of pesticide use intensity (CEPI) in arable crops

Abstract

To date, the analyses and regional evaluation of pesticide use intensity in arable crops in the Reference Farms Network were conducted based on the division of Germany into the large geographic regions, North, East, South and West. The soil-climate-areas formed the initial basis. The large geographic regions often explained only unsatisfactorily the regional specificities in the evaluation results. Hence, a new proposal was developed for a new regional spatial consolidation based on the existing soil-climate-areas. The geo-climatic key factors for pesticide use intensity served as attributes for the new consolidation of the soil-climate-areas. The factors were clustered based on their similarity in a cluster analysis. As a result of the cluster analysis eight clusters emerged and were merged to six clusters for regional evaluation and analysis of pesticide use intensity in arable crops (CEPI) after distributing the number of Reference Farms to the clusters and in order to enable a sound evaluation. The CEPI explain better the regional differences of the treatment index compared to the large geographic regions. Regional and annual differences are revealed more distinctively and enable a better scientific interpretation of the results.