Location: Northwest Watershed Research Center
Project Number: 2052-21500-001-011-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2025
End Date: Jul 31, 2026
Objective:
The Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM) is a process-based web tool developed by USDA-ARS for assessing runoff, soil erosion rate, and sediment delivery on rangelands at the hillslope scale for a single rainfall event and for evaluating disturbance impacts and targeting conservation/restoration practices, including woody fuels management. Appropriate parameterization and evaluation of model performance are critical for model acceptance by land managers, ranchers, and other producers as a useful tool. The objective of this project is to evaluate model performance, parameterization approaches, and model frameworks for applications of RHEM to assess impacts of wildfire and fuel reduction treatments on sagebrush rangelands in the western US.
Approach:
To accomplish objectives of the research, the performance of RHEM for effectively predicting runoff and erosion on untreated and treated (woody fuels reduction/removal) sagebrush rangelands will be evaluated using existing datasets spanning the western US. Model performance will be evaluated without calibration and with (a) optimizing various parameters such as effective hydraulic conductivity (Ke), sheet-splash erodibility (Kss), and (b) varied approaches to represent effects of concentrated flow connectivity and spatially variable surface cover.