Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) Model 2024 Status

• DOI: 10.13031/aim.202400678
• Publication Date: 2024-07-18T18:35:50Z
• Authors: Dennis C Flanagan; James R. Frankenb...; Chris S. Renschler; Chris B. Coreil; Olaf David; Anurag Srivastava; Sadia A. Jame; Ryan P. McGehee
• Keywords: WEPP; Water erosion

The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model has been developed by the United States Department of Agriculture since 1985. WEPP is a physical process-based simulation technology to estimate runoff, soil loss, and sediment yields from hillslope profiles, small watersheds, and fields. In this paper we will provide current science model status, recent updates including water quality capabilities, and newest model web-based interfaces and databases. A cooperative project between the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has resulted in development of new web-based interfaces for model applications to hillslope profiles (https://brenton.nserl.purdue.edu/wepp/) and user-defined field polygon areas. These utilize the new NRCS Conservation Resources - Land Management Operations Database (CRLMOD) that provides consistent information for crop growth, tillage operations, and management operations for WEPP as well as the Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS), and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation version 2 (RUSLE2). An updated version of GeoWEPP has also been developed that functions with open-source QGIS instead of the proprietary ArcGIS. In addition to ARS and NRCS WEPP interfaces, other groups have also developed their own technologies utilizing WEPP for erosion predictions and watershed soil loss and sediment delivery applications. The USDA Forest Service together with the University of Idaho has created numerous web-based tools (https://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/fswepp/), most recently WEPPcloud (https://wepp.cloud/weppcloud/). Iowa State University utilizes WEPP and observed radar precipitation data in their Daily Erosion Project, that provides near real-time daily estimates of runoff and soil loss across 7 Midwest states and reported in a web-based interface on a HUC-12 basis (https://www.dailyerosion.org/). Current WEPP efforts and future plans will also be discussed. ; It is from an ASABE meeting paper Flanagan, Dennis C., James R. ...