Location: Pasture Systems & Watershed Management Research
Project Number: 8070-21500-001-005-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Apr 1, 2024
End Date: Jun 30, 2025
Objective:
Continue development of tools for mapping and modeling ecosystem services provided by pastures to better quantify the outcomes of conservation practices. Specific objectives are:
1. Identification, compilation, and harmonization of geospatial datasets required for development of the Pastureland Ecological Vulnerability Index (pEVI).
2. Modeling of erosion risk in pastures as determined by weather, soils, and vegetation management for those regions of the contiguous United States where pasture grazing is practiced.
Approach:
Tools for evaluating the response of ecosystem services to conservation and management practices are needed for pastures. The pEVI tool will provide a robust, defensible, dynamic matrix for pastureland water erosion and production/yield vulnerabilities in vegetated pastures, based on available data and models, and with mappable predictions of baseline risk class. The deliverables from this work include the modeling results needed to facilitate the initial stages of pEVI development, and a comparison of the RUSLE, RUSLE2, and WEPP model results in temperate humid pastures.
