Location: Northwest Watershed Research Center
Project Number: 2052-21500-001-007-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: May 1, 2024
End Date: Oct 1, 2025
Objective:
The Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM) is a process-based web tool developed by USDA-ARS for assessing runoff, soil erosion rate, and sediment delivery on rangelands at the hillslope scale for a single rainfall event and for evaluating disturbance impacts and targeting conservation/restoration practices, including brush management. Appropriate parameterization and evaluation of model performance are critical for model acceptance by land managers as a useful tool. The objective of this project is to evaluate parameterization approaches, modeling frameworks, and model performance for applications of RHEM to assess impacts of brush management (tree removal) treatments on pinyon- and juniper-dominated sagebrush rangelands in the western US.
Approach:
To accomplish the objective of the research, the following tasks will be performed:
Evaluate the performance of RHEM for generating runoff and erosion on untreated and treated pinyon- and juniper-dominated sagebrush rangelands using existing datasets spanning the western US. Model performance will be evaluated without calibration and with optimizing various parameters such as effective hydraulic conductivity (Ke), sheet-splash erodibility (Kss), and (2) varied approaches to represent effects of concentrated flow connectivity and varied surface cover.
