The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) watershed scale model was developed by the USDA forpurposes of erosion assessment and conservation planning. The purpose of this study was to verify that the watershedmodel behaves rationally and consistently over a range of discretization structures and channel parameter inputs forapplications to small watersheds. Effects of watershed discretization were evaluated for selected events within a one-yearcontinuous simulation by comparing results for two watersheds under various discretization schemes. Impacts of channelinput parameters were assessed by comparing the value of a linear sensitivity coefficient for user-specified parameters.Hillslope length, Mannings coefficients, and channel slope were found to be key parameters in the prediction ofwatershed sediment yields. Erodibility and critical shear stress were found to be important for events where channel scourwas active, and the results were sensitive to the hydraulic conductivity for events with small runoff and small sedimentcontributions from hillslopes. Improvements in the WEPP model are suggested where limitations were observed.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Baffaut et al. (1997) studied this question.