DOI: 10.25349/d9j62b
title: Analysis data for "The effect of agricultural land retirement on pesticide use"

description: Agricultural land retirement generates risks and opportunities for
 ecological communities and ecosystem services. Of particular interest is
 the influence of retired cropland on agricultural pests and pesticides, as
 these uncultivated lands may directly shift the distribution of pesticide
 use and may serve as a source of pests and/or natural enemies for
 remaining active croplands. Few studies have investigated how agricultural
 pesticide use is impacted by land retirement. Here we couple field-level
 crop and pesticide data from over 200,000 field-year observations and 15
 years of production in Kern County, CA, USA to investigate: 1) how much
 pesticide use and applied toxicity are avoided annually due to the direct
 effects of retirement, 2) whether surrounding retirement drives pesticide
 use on active cropland and what types of pesticides are most influenced,
 and 3) whether the effect of surrounding retirement on pesticide use is
 dependent on the age or revegetation cover on retired parcels. Our results
 suggest about 100 kha are idle in any given year, which equates to about
 1.3-3 M kg of pesticide active ingredients foregone. We also find retired
 lands lead to a small increase in total pesticide use on nearby active
 lands even after controlling for a combination of crop-, farmer-, region-
 and year-specific heterogeneity. More specifically, the results suggest a
 10 % increase in retired lands nearby results in about a 0.6 % increase in
 pesticides, with the effect sizes increasing as a function of the duration
 of continuous fallowing, but decreasing or even reversing sign at high
 levels of revegetation cover. Our results suggest increasingly prevalent
 agricultural land retirement can shift the distribution of pesticides
 based on what crops are retired and what active crops remain nearby.
description: Identifying and characterizing retired lands
 Vector files representing crop field boundaries from 1997 to 2021
 were downloaded from the Kern County Agricultural Commissioner's
 Office (http://www.kernag.com/gis/gis-data.asp). These geospatial data include information such as farmer (“permit”), area in production, and crop type (“commodity”, “commodity code”), from which we derived crop family. Using the set of permitted fields between 1997 and 2021, we identified fields that changed from production to lack of production or vice versa (see SI methods). Retirement was defined as either a parcel permitted as “uncultivated agriculture” with no other crop produced on that physical location during the year, or as a parcel that did not receive a permit in the focal year, but was cultivated at some point in the time series. Pesticide use data California mandates the collection of pesticide use data on production agriculture, which includes information such as date of application, product number, and amount of product used, among other data. The field-level, daily pesticide use data were sourced from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) Pesticide Use Reports when available (pre-2021) and the Kern County Agricultural Commissioner's Office for 2021.  Pesticide applied toxicity To quantify applied toxicity, we prioritized ecotoxicological observations available through the Pesticide Properties Database (PPDB). The database derives ecotoxicological endpoints from European and United States regulatory agencies where able, and where peer-reviewed literature, ecotoxicity prediction tools, and other resources are consulted, verified datasets receive the highest priority. Foregone pesticide use and toxicity From daily, field-level pesticide use data, we calculated mean annual pesticide use (kg ha−1 of active ingredients) by crop-year. We calculated foregone pesticide use based on the crop-year specific pesticide use rates using kg ha−1 average for the crop last produced on the retired fragment. Revegetation Data coverage and cloud screening: Revegetation of retired lands was evaluated using multispectral satellite imagery. All available Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images from WRS-2 Path 42, Rows 35 and 36 were downloaded as Collection 2, Level 2 surface reflectance from the USGS EarthExplorer web portal (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). Photosynthetic vegetative cover on retired lands was then quantified using spectral mixture analysis (SMA) of Landsat imagery <em><strong>See the journal article for more information on the methodology </strong></em><em><strong>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165224</strong></em>
description:      
  
description: # Analysis data for "The effect of agricultural land retirement on
 pesticide use" These data are used to understand the impact of land
 retirement on pesticides in Kern County, California. For details on the
 analysis, please see
 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165224](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165224) ## Description of the data and file structure **Below is a basic dictionary to understand variable naming convention.** ### Data File 1 `RetirementStats_postRR_Dryad.csv` *45 columns/variables and 211,820 rows/observations* * `IHS` indicates inverse-hyperbolic sine transformed * `IHSKgHa[pesticide]Fill100` indicate different pesticide use variables that have been IHS transformed. * `Fill` indicates the variable includes 2021 data from Kern County Agricultural Commissioner's Office since CDPR data are not available (see text) * `100` indicates the variable was pre-multiplied by 100 prior to IHS transformation (see text) * `KgHa[]AI` indicates kg/ha of pesticide active ingredients ("AI") for different types of pesticides. * `Hati_[]` indicate toxicity to different taxa * `IHSHaUncultYrFtT` indicates IHS transformed annually uncultivated agriculture nearby (see text) * `IHSHaUncultRS[]` indicate IHS transformed variables of different remote sensing metrics of uncultivated land (quantiles of revegetation, `RS[]FracQ1-Q4`, where `buff` indicates the interior buffer and `full` indicated all fields; see text) * `IHSHaUncultYrFtT[]` indicates IHS transformed metrics of uncultivated agriculture of different age bins. Variables lacking "IHS" prefix indicate the variable prior to IHS transformation. * `IHSHaPrmtOrig` indicates IHS transformed hectares permitted (field size, based on permit). Variables lacking "IHS" prefix indicate the variable prior to IHS transformation. * `Year` indicates year * `MTRfill` indicates Public Land Survey Township * `commcode` indicates commodity code * `permitNumEncode` indicates the farmer ID (encoded) * `permitsiteEncode` is the unit of observation (encoded) for the statistical analyses ### Data File 2 `ForegonePU_post.csv` *10 columns/variables and 17 rows/observations* * `ForegPestAIKgYrComPUR1k` Foregone pesticide use (active ingredients) based on commodity-year specific averages, scaled by 1000. * `ForegToxNetKgYrComPUR1T` Foregone net toxicity based on commodity-year specific averages, scaled by 1Trillion. Mammal (`Mam`), Bird (`Brd`), Worm (`Worm`) and Bee (`Bee`) toxicity take the same form * `HectareFallowedYr1k` Annually uncultivated agriculture, scaled by 1000 * `HectareActive1x1k` Actively cultivated cropland cultivated (counted once, see text), scaled by 1000 * `PUR` indicates California Department of Pesticide Regulation Pesticide Use Reports (see text). ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from the following sources: * Please text for original data sources and how they were used and processed.