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Submitted to: Society for Range Management Meeting Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 2/3/1997 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) is a fundamental process-based model developed to replace the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) model. It operates on a daily time step allowing for the incorporation of temporal changes in soil erodibility, management practices, above- and below-ground biomass, litter biomass, plant height, and canopy cover. The model is designed for use on all types of grazinglands including rangelands, pastures, woodlands, and alpine meadows. WEPP is intended to apply to all situations where soil erosion by water occurs including that resulting from rainfall, snowmelt, irrigation and ephemeral gullies. While WEPP technology represents a great advance in erosion prediction capability, improvements in model accuracy are often lost in the parameterization process. Before the full potential of WEPP as a management tool can be realized, improvements in the parameter estimation procedures used to represent vegetation, soil and management induced temporal and spatial variability are needed. In addition, new methods to rapidly and economically assemble, distribute and maintain databases need to be developed before WEPP or any other simulation model can effectively be utilized by the public. |
