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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Reno, Nevada » Great Basin Rangelands Research » Research » Research Project #440932

Research Project: Rangeland Ecohydrology

Location: Great Basin Rangelands Research

Project Number: 2060-21500-001-007-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement

Start Date: Sep 13, 2021
End Date: Sep 30, 2025

Objective:
Develop and teach a 5-day short course to NRCS on rangeland ecohydrology. This 5 day workshop is designed to provide workshop participants background on dominant hydrologic and erosion process on rangelands, equations implemented in the Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM) and Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment tool and how to access and interpret model predictions using examples from across the United States for contrasting ecological and climatic conditions.

Approach:
The RHEM and AGWA web-based tool have been designed to investigate the hydrologic-soil erosion impacts of land-cover and land-use change. RHEM uses an intuitive interface, requiring relatively little hydrologic expertise to identify areas that are more susceptible to land use impacts and evaluate different management scenarios or alternative futures. During the workshop users will be shown how to use RHEM to conduct national estimates of soil erosion, assess the benefits of conservation, how to use hydrologic information to develop Ecological Site Descriptions, and define the hydrologic impact of the shift from one ecological state to another using the concept of state-and-transition models.