Location: Range Management Research
Project Number: 3050-21600-001-109-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2023
End Date: Jun 30, 2026
Objective:
The broad program objective is to produce a wind erosion decision-support model and analyses that contribute to management objectives of partner agencies, including the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The research will develop a wind erosion model from existing and new theory, provide calibration and validation to establish model uncertainty across land cover types, and conduct model applications at different scales integrating data from national monitoring networks.
Approach:
1: Maintain AERO model code and develop AERO to support NRCS goals.
2: Guide NRCS team on use of national monitoring datasets and remote sensing products to support multi-scale assessments including wind erosion, dust emission and other indicators with respect to conservation practices.
3: Develop science underpinning online tool for exploring the rangeland Soil Vulnerability Index for wind erosion (rSVI-wind).
4: Develop AERO calibration to support assessment of impacts of conservation practices on wind erosion, including incorporation of expanded range of ecosystems and disturbances in model parameterization and test of dust emission scheme for different soil types.
5: Conduct webinar to support the use of the AERO model and analysis tools within NRCS.
6: Continue to improve and maintain the underlying software infrastructure of the Landscape Data Commons.
7: Establish an automated workflow for producing non-weighted and multi-scale indicator summaries and analyses, including model outputs.
8: Produce a web-based GUI for terradactyl R package to support customized indicator calculations.
9: Develop analysis tools to identify indicator benchmarks for ESDs and ESGs and apply them to quantitative monitoring data and model estimates in the Landscape Data Commons to enable users to identify resource concerns and their relation to practices associated with state transitions.
10: Conduct webinar to support the use of the Landscape Data Commons, data visualization and analysis tools, and benchmarks within NRCS.
11: Support NRCS with multi-indicator analyses using the Landscape Data Commons on all lands in the western US. Due to a lack of full funding, some of the above objectives may be initiated but not completed; there is a need for ongoing funding.
