Technical Abstract: Volatilization of pesticides from agricultural land is of a concern because of potentially detrimental environmental and ecological impacts. A 3-year study was conducted to focus on the impact of surface soil water on metolachlor volatilization from a single field with different surface soil water regimes created by subsurface water flow paths. Metolachlor vapor fluxes were monitored at two locations within the field where local meteorological conditions, soil, management, and landscape feature were constant. The two monitoring locations differed with surface soil water content at V2 were generally greater due to the existence of subsurface flow pathways, relative to V1. Results show that for the first two years (2004 & 2005) surface soil water content at the V1 location were nearly half that of at V2. During 2004 and 2005, cumulative metolachlor vapor fluxes at the dry location, V1, were also about half that of the wetter location, V2. However, in the third year (2006) drought conditions rendered the soil water content at the two locations (V1 and V2) to be nearly identical, resulting in similar metolachlor volatilization losses. Furthermore, analysis of the infrared temperatures (IRT) suggests a correlation between surface soil temperatures and metolachlor volatilization when soils are wet, but not when the soils were dry. Last, field averaged metolachlor volatilization losses were highly correlated with increasing surface soil water contents with r2 = 0.995. This study demonstrates two issues: 1) the need for quantifying surface soil moisture and meteorological conditions when conducting field pesticide volatilization studies: and 2) the need for developing soil water content observations for footprints on the order of 100¿s of meters.