ARS | Publication request: SIMULATING SMALL WATERSHEDS WITH WATER EROSION PREDICTION PROJECT TECHNOLOGY

Submitted to: American Society of Agricultural Engineers
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: November 1, 2000
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: The USDA Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model is a continuous simulation, process-based soil erosion model that allows simulation of small watersheds and hillslope profiles within those watersheds. A major problem that has impeded full implementation and use of WEPP since its public release in 1995 has been the lack of a modern, easy-to-use, Windows interface, particularly for watershed applications. Concentrated effort on watershed interfaces for WEPP has been underway at the National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory (NSERL) since 1997. The most basic watershed interface requires that the user enter information on the screen to delineate the channels, hillslope profiles, and impoundments that comprise the watershed. Background photographs (for example scanned from soil surveys), can be imported and used to assist in defining the watershed. Drawing tools allow orientation, scaling, and placement of polygons to match field areas. The visual representation is then converted to a group of hillslope, channel, impoundment and watershed structure files by the interface. After creating the appropriate input files, the interface executes the WEPP model and provides model simulation results in text format and graphically displays outputs on the user-delineated screen image. Additional work is also in progress to allow WEPP watershed model simulations through linkage with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) utilizing digital elevation data.