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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Pullman, Washington » Northwest Sustainable Agroecosystems Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #386936
Research Project: Improving Air Quality, Soil Health and Nutrient Use Efficiency to Increase Northwest Agroecosystem Performance

Location: Northwest Sustainable Agroecosystems Research

Title: Performance of the SWEEP model in assessing the impact of crop rotation, green manure, fertilizer, and tillage on wind erosion

Author
item PI, HUAWEI - Henan University
item HUGGINS, DAVID - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)
item SHARRATT, BRENTON - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)
item LI, SISI - Henan University

Submitted to: Land Degradation and Development
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/29/2022
Publication Date: 2/5/2022
Citation: Pi, H., Huggins, D., Sharratt, B., Li, S. 2022. Performance of the SWEEP model in assessing the impact of crop rotation, green manure, fertilizer, and tillage on wind erosion. Land Degradation and Development. 33(11):1787-1798. https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.4220.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.4220

Interpretive Summary: Agricultural practices can minimize wind erosion in the inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW) if they promote favorable soil properties and crop residue characteristics. Modeling soil loss from different agricultural practices due to wind erosion, however, remains a challenge. We tested the performance of the Single-event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program (SWEEP) model to see how it would simulate soil loss from agricultural land under contrasting tillage, crop rotation, fertilizer, and green manure treatments. We found that these agricultural practices mostly impacted residue characteristics except for the tillage treatments with impacted both soil properties and residue characteristics. We also found that the SWEEP model performance was acceptable for crop rotation and fertilizer treatments, but performed poorly for manure treatments. We concluded that the SWEEP model can be used to identify many control measures for windblown soil loss in the iPNW. These results are meaningful for scientist, agricultural professionals, conservation entities and producers.

Technical Abstract: Agricultural land management strategies can minimize wind erosion in the inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW) when they promote favorable soil properties and crop residue characteristics. Simulating soil loss using models, however, remains a challenge. The objective of this study was to test the performance of the Single-event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program (SWEEP) in simulating soil loss from agricultural land under contrasting tillage, crop rotation, fertilizer, and green manure treatments in the iPNW. These management strategies impacted residue characteristics but had little or no impact on soil properties except tillage treatments. Tillage had a greater impact on soil properties and residue characteristics than other treatments. The performance of SWEEP varied among disk tillage (DT), undercutter-tillage (UT), and NT (no-tillage) treatments. No or little difference was found in the performance of SWEEP between winter wheat-summer fallow (WW-SF) and WW-Oilseed-SF (WW-O-SF) crop rotations and synthetic and biosolids fertilizer treatments. The performance of SWEEP was also acceptable for both crop rotation and fertilizer treatments. In contrast, poor agreement between simulated and measured wind erosion was found for manure treatments in which SWEEP over-estimated erosion for both no manure and manure treatments. The over-estimation of SWEEP may be due to the over-estimation in abrasion flux from the fully crusted soil surface. Our results demonstrate that SWEEP can be used to identify control measures for windblown soil loss in the iPNW.