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ARS Home » Midwest Area » West Lafayette, Indiana » National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #112048
Title: SPATIALLY DISTRIBUTED SOIL EROSION ASSESSMENT WITH COMMONLY AVAILABLE DATA GIS-BASED APPLICATIONS WITH WEPP

Author
item RENSCHLER, CHRISTIAN - PURDUE UNIVERSITY
item Flanagan, Dennis
item Nearing, Mark

Submitted to: European Soil Conservation Society
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/1/2000
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Information technology in the last decade has empowered the public to access and visualize commonly available environmental data through the Internet. Public agencies in several parts of the world, including the United States, provide detailed spatially distributed topographic information in contour line or raster format as Digital Evaluation Models (DEM) together with digital Orthophotos and soil surveys at the 1:24,000 map scale. In the near future even more data will be available online to apply environmental assessment tools at the local and regional scale. Graphical tools supported by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can assist users in automatically delineating watersheds with their hillslopes' and channels' characteristics and provide ready data sets for a site of interest by using these commonly available data sources. The difficulties, possibilities and requirements of a spatially distributed GIS-based assessment approach with the model of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) are discussed with the aim of implementing a user-friendly publicly accessible assessment tool as practical support for decision makers in soil and water conservation. The process-based nature may allow WEPP to be applied in various geographic areas with little or no calibration if standardized data preprocessing procedures take into account the data input requirements. The approach accounts for detailed spatially distributed input and prediction results at various scales needed by decision-makers at the site, local and regional level.