SYBERAC Modelling
The SYBERAC Work Package 3 (WP3), led by Louise Wipfler from Stichting Wageningen Research (WENR), develops advanced modelling approaches to assess how agrochemical exposure affects biodiversity, ecosystem services, and bioaccumulation at the landscape level.
Agrochemical exposure occurs when humans, animals, or ecosystems come into contact with chemical products like pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilisers. SYBERAC’s modelling focuses on agrochemical exposure in terms of pesticides and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) from sewage sludge used to fertilise fields, for example pharmaceuticals and PFAS.
Modelling our Case Studies
Our goal is to assess chemicals at a holistic, landscape level. To achieve this, we are developing innovative models that address four levels of complexity:
Chemical Fate: How chemicals release and move through the environment.
Individual Level: How chemicals impact a single organism.
Population Level: How these impacts scale up, affecting whole species groups.
Ecosystem Services: How chemical exposure influences biodiversity and the services the environment provides (e.g., pest control, pollination).
To ensure these models work, we are applying them to specific Case Studies (CS) across Europe.
Our Case Studies and modelling efforts are connected as shown in the table, covering different landscapes and species.
Want to learn more?
Download PDF with links to sources by clicking the button below.
Modelling Tools
To model real-world scenarios, SYBERAC uses different tools. Click or tap the plus sign to learn more.
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PEARL (Pesticide Emission Assessment at Regional and Local scales) is a standard model used to simulate the behaviour of pesticides in soil. It predicts how chemicals leach into groundwater or drain into surface waters to determine their "Environmental Fate." It is a standard regulatory tool in the European Union for predicting leaching to groundwater and drainage to surface water.
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xLandscape is a modular modelling framework to generate spatially explicit landscape scenarios. It integrates real-world geographic data (GIS) with exposure and effect models to simulate pesticide risks to non-target organisms at a landscape scale.
(Source: https://academic.oup.com/ieam/article/20/1/263/7725049?login=false)
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ALMaSS (Animal, Landscape, and Man Simulation System) ALMaSS is an agent-based model where individual animals interact within dynamic, real-world landscapes. Unlike static models, it simulates daily vegetation growth, active farm management, and interacting stressors at a 1 m² resolution. This high level of detail predicts how individual responses scale up to population impacts, providing a critical tool for regulatory risk assessment and conservation.
(source: https://projects.au.dk/almass)
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TKTD or toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic models simulate how a toxin enters an organism, moves through its body, and causes harm over time. The General Unified Threshold model of Survival (GUTS) is such a model. Buffer-GUTS is a new variant including a buffer between the external exposure and inside the organism, e.g. to account for residues on the exoskeleton or in the stomach.
(source: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2018.5377)
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PBTK or Physiologically Based Toxicokinetic models integrate physiological and biochemical parameters, acting like customised digital maps of the organism using real biological data. This makes it possible to extrapolate between species and doses.
(source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230018303106)
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An Agent-Based Model is a computational simulation that focuses on the actions and interactions of individual, autonomous entities called agents. They simulate specific individuals, whether they are cells, people, banks, or animals, and observe what happens when they interact with each other and their environment.
(source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/agent-based-model)
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PDE (Partial Differential Equation models) track changes across both time and a specific structure, such as a physical location or a biological stage. This allows scientists to create detailed maps of exactly where something is moving inside an organ or how a cell is progressing through its life cycle.
(Source: https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7_694)
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GUTS (General Unified Threshold model of Survival) is a comprehensive toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic framework that unifies various existing eco toxicological models by explicitly defining their underlying assumptions, such as whether death results from individual tolerance thresholds or stochastic processes. By simulating the time-dependent progression of toxic effects, it allows researchers to derive specific survival models as special cases of a single system, thereby standardizing and improving environmental risk assessment.
(source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es103092a)
Buffer-GUTS is an extension of the standard GUTS framework designed for terrestrial arthropods, which uses an intermediate "buffer" compartment to model the delayed absorption of pesticides from the exoskeleton or gut. By mathematically integrating multiple exposure routes like contact and ingestion, it allows researchers to predict organism survival under dynamic, real-world conditions without requiring species-specific adaptations.
(source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.5c03925?ref=article_openPDF)
