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Figure 3.4 illustrates spatial coverage of available data on pesticide monitoring reported under Waterbase – Water Quality in the time period 2007 to 2017 for each country in relation to the arable land ratio. The arable land ratio was calculated based on the country area and the arable land area in this country.
According to the arable land ratio, Denmark and Hungary are the countries with more than 50% of arable land. Poland has 43%, and Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Lithuania with an amount between 30 and 40% arable land cover. Arable land includes intensively used, usually ploughed land. This includes non-irrigated arable land, permanently irrigated land and rice fields. Agriculture additionally uses permanent cropped land, pastures and heterogeneous areas [1].
The reported number of monitoring sites differs between countries. Whereas Austria (16), Cyprus (10), Malta (89), Ireland (16) and Iceland (47) reported more than 10 monitoring sites per hectare arable land in the time period 2007 to 2017, the mean of reported monitoring sites for all other countries is 2.2. A list of available data on arable land use ratio, monitoring sites as well as number of reported pesticides is given in Annex 3.
[1] CORINE land cover land use definitions: https://land.copernicus.eu/eagle/files/eagle-related-projects/pt_clc-conversion-to-fao-lccs3_dec2010
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The arable land defintion used excludes permanent crops e.g. vineyards and orchards, where PPPs are used relatively intensively. So, I dont think this is a useful parameter.
I don't quite get the usefulness of calculating the arable land ratio. In the end the spatial coverage is well represented by the number of monitoring sites per area of arable land, irrespectively of the proportion of arable land to total area.
HU:
There is an error on page 18, in the text about arable land ratio, Hungary is mentioned twice, first above 50%, later between 30 and 40%.
In the next paragraph the number the density of the monitoring network is expressed site per hectare, reporting incredibly high numbers from 10 to 47. In the legend of the next figure the density is given as site per 100 km2, which seems reasonable contrary to the per hectare unit.