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ARS Home » Midwest Area » West Lafayette, Indiana » National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #125439
Title: ENHANCED WEPP MODEL APPLICABILITY FOR IMPROVED EROSION PREDICTION

Author
item Flanagan, Dennis
item RENSCHLER, C - PURDUE UNIVERSITY
item Frankenberger, James - Jim
item COCHRANE, T - PURDUE UNIVERSITY
item ENGEL, B - PURDUE UNIVERSITY

Submitted to: International Congress on Modeling and Simulation Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/1/2001
Publication Date: 12/10/2001
Citation: Flanagan, D.C., Renschler, C.S., Frankenberger, J.R., Cochrane, T.A., Engel, B.A. Enhanced WEPP model applicability for improved erosion prediction. International Congress on Modeling and simulation Proceedings. 2001. p. 1817-1822.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Application and implementation of soil erosion prediction models is very challenging due to many factors. New physical process-based models require large numbers of input parameters related to climate, soil, topography and management. Model users are commonly expected to define representative hillslopes, meant to represent the topography and soil for a field or field region. Different people create different representative hillslope profiles, simulating different rates of soil erosion. The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1985-1995, and can be used to simulate erosion, deposition and sediment delivery from small watersheds (1 to 500 ha) and hillslope profiles in those watersheds. WEPP is a process-based model intended to ultimately replace soil loss predictions based upon the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). The relatively slow rate of adoption of WEPP by action agencies within the U.S. has been difficulties associated with ease of use and model input creation. Since 1997, major efforts in WEPP have focused on creation of user-friendly interfaces and procedures for automatically generating topographic inputs from digital elevation data. New software includes a stand-alone Windows program and an Internet Web-Browser interface. Automated techniques involve use of Geographic Information Systems and Digital Elevation Models, and can rapidly create an objective set of topographic inputs for the model, and organize extremely complex watershed model applications, which a user can then review and modify. This presentation will describe the WEPP software and procedures as tools for conducting erosion model simulations on hillslope profiles and small watersheds.