Predicting Plant Communities in the vicinity of agricultural fields/vineyards in Europe to inform non-target terrestrial plant risk assessment

The terrestrial plant risk assessment of pesticides is currently based on testing 10 single species in two different test systems. These species are mostly crop species, grown as single species in pots. Higher tier tests of any kind (e.g. field, semi-field, landscape studies) are not standardized. In this study we explored an approach to inform such a higher level by collecting datasets and information at European scale to characterize the vegetation communities that are likely to grow in the off-field areas of wheat and vine crops. This study was performed at the request of CropLife Europe and its Non-Target Plant group. The QUICKScan methodology (http://www.QUICKScan.pro) was used to combine all data. Habitat suitability maps were generated and combined with crop distribution maps for wheat and vine to generate potential occurrence maps of EUNIS habitats and their vegetation in agricultural land surrounding wheat and vine crops and were linked with plant trait information. We conclude that this method is helpful in reaching the objective as described in this report. Its potential is that it can be extended probabilistically or linked to plant effect models.