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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Mississippi State, Mississippi » Crop Science Research Laboratory » Genetics and Sustainable Agriculture Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #301880
Title: Performance of the SWEEP model affected by estimates of threshold friction velocity

Author
item PI, HUAWEI - Chinese Academy Of Sciences
item Feng, Gary
item Sharratt, Brenton

Submitted to: Transactions of the ASABE
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/28/2016
Publication Date: 11/1/2014
Publication URL: http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/60152
Citation: Pi, H., Feng, G.G., Sharratt, B.S. 2014. Performance of the SWEEP model affected by estimates of threshold friction velocity. Transactions of the ASABE. 57:1675-1685.

Interpretive Summary: The USDA-ARS Single-event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program (SWEEP) was developed to aid in identifying and managing lands highly susceptible to wind erosion, but it sometimes failed to simulate erosion in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. SWEEP was found to consistently overestimate the measured threshold velocity at which the soil begins to erode, thus resulting in its poor performance. Therefore, effort was taken in this study to improve the performance of SWEEP by replacing the simulated u*t with measured values of u*t or other estimates of u*t based upon algorithms used in the Lu and Shao model, Shao model, Texas Tech Erosion Analysis Model (TEAM), and Wind Erosion on European Light Soils (WEELS) model. The occurrence of erosion from agricultural lands during high wind events in the Columbia Plateau was better estimated by the SWEEP model using u*t algorithms of Lu and Shao, Shao, and TEAM. Our results suggest that the occurrence of erosion events can be better simulated using other algorithms to estimate u*t in the SWEEP model.

Technical Abstract: The Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) is a process-based model and needs to be verified under a broad range of climatic, soil, and management conditions. Occasional failure of the WEPS erosion submodel (Single-event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program or SWEEP) to simulate erosion in the Columbia Plateau region of the Pacific Northwest United States is partly due to overestimation of threshold friction velocity (u*t). No definitive work has been conducted to improve the poor performance of the SWEEP model in the region. Therefore the objective of this study was to test the performance of the SWEEP model by replacing the simulated u*t with measured values of u*t or other estimates of u*t based upon algorithms used in the Lu and Shao model, Shao model, Texas Tech Erosion Analysis Model (TEAM), and Wind Erosion on European Light Soils (WEELS) model. The occurrence of erosion from agricultural lands during high wind events in the Columbia Plateau was better estimated by the SWEEP model using u*t algorithms of Lu and Shao, Shao, and TEAM. Our results suggest that while the magnitude of erosion was underestimated or overestimated by the SWEEP and modified SWEEP models, the occurrence of erosion events can be better simulated using other algorithms to estimate u*t in the SWEEP model.