Large-Scale Impacts of Frozen Soil on Soil Erosion: Coupling the WEPP Model to a Macro-Scale Hydrologic Model

摘要

Assessing environmental impacts of soil loss at large scales is necessary for regional management of natural resources and policy making. The process-based Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model has the ability to predict the spatial and temporal distribution of soil loss at a field scale. Recent development of a stand-alone version of the WEPP erosion code provides the basis for coupling with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) macro-scale hydrology model to predict long-term hillslope erosion potentials for large regions. This paper describes the coupling schematic and preliminary tests of coupled soil erosion predictions. Coupled model projections have similar estimation of annual average soil loss versus simulations using the full WEPP model for sampled hillslopes. Differences in soil loss estimation may be due to climate data discrepancies and uncertainties in scaling. The preliminary coupling study has highlighted a number of issues with the coupling process that still need to beaddressed including problems with temporal and spatial scaling.