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ARS Home » Midwest Area » West Lafayette, Indiana » National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #425202
Research Project: Assessment of Sediment and Chemical Transport Processes for Developing and Improving Agricultural Conservation Practices

Location: National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory

Title: WEPP-COMPARE: A web-based decision support system for comprehensive land management and soil erosion assessment

Author
item Yen, Haw
item PONNAMBALAM, VIJAYALAKSHMI - Purdue University
item Flanagan, Dennis
item Renschler, Christian
item SRIVASTAVA, ANARAG - University Of Idaho
item Williams, Mark

Submitted to: Environmental Modelling & Software
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/3/2025
Publication Date: 8/5/2025
Citation: Yen, H., Ponnambalam, V.S., Flanagan, D.C., Renschler, C.S., Srivastava, A., Williams, M.R. 2025. WEPP-COMPARE: A web-based decision support system for comprehensive land management and soil erosion assessment. Environmental Modelling & Software. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2025.106643.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2025.106643

Interpretive Summary: In the past 30 years, many models have been developed to solve difficult problems. The Water Erosion Prediction Project model was developed to answer soil problems since 1985. Meanwhile, it is hard for those who do not receive many years of training to do the work. It is also difficult to make comparisons within limited time. In 2013, the United State Department of Agriculture and three universities to develop a web-based interface for this purpose. The developed interface can be used for making decisions by managers. It is also available to the public with no limitations in the United States. Users can also make changes at their wills with no issues.

Technical Abstract: In the past three decades, numerous watershed and field-scale simulation models have been developed to facilitate the keen interests of environmental assessment along with the changing anthropogenic activities. The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model is developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to address detailed soil erosion problems by using process-based functions and continuous simulation routines since 1985. While the sophisticated and robust modeling framework it provides, however, applications of the proven design could be fairly challenging for those who do not possess long-term professional training. In addition, it could be potentially cumbersome to make comparisons between scenarios within a limited time allowance. In 2013, the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has been initiating a collaborative project with USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Purdue University, University of Idaho, and Colorado State University to build a web-based interface for the WEPP model, dubbed WEPP-DSS. WEPP-DSS is specifically developed to fulfill NRCS requirements as a web-based, spatial-distributed, used-friendly decision support system (DSS) that can be implemented to derive relevant and visualized outputs for the entire United States. WEPP-DSS is available to the general public, whereas users can perform WEPP runs anywhere at county level (can be further reduced by drawing user-preferred boundaries) in all 50 states and five major territories within a few minutes. Furthermore, a full list of templates of management practices for various crops is available for users to make adjustments as needed.