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The application of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model for the estimation of runoff and sediment on a monthly time resolution

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Abstract

The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model is utilized to simulate the sediment and runoff processes. According to previous studies, WEPP model provides impressive results in watersheds of diverse climates and scales. It is also capable of modeling the sediment transportation processes and consequently predicting subsequent deposition sites. In this study, the geo-spatial interface for WEPP (GeoWEPP) was employed as a GIS framework to extract the data required from the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTER-GDEM) dataset which was subsequently used as the model input. The case study was based on monthly data consisting of average sediment and runoff estimation from the Emameh sub-basin, in northern Iran. The model estimations were validated through field measurements. Two statistical measures of co-efficiency including the Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), and the coefficient of determination (R 2) were considered to evaluate how well the model predictions could explain the variability of observations in the field. The model performed favorably as corroborated by a reasonably high NSE of 0.99 and an R 2 value of 0.92 for sediment. In the case of runoff, the results were slightly inferior, but still acceptable with an NSE of 0.76 and R 2 value of 0.62.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge and thank Dr Jonathan Peter Cox and Mr See Hai Ooi for valuable help in editing and improving the English of manuscript. We also wish to thank University Malaysia Pahang for supporting this work through the grant number RDU14359.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Civil engineering and Earth Resources, University Malaysia Pahang, Gambang, Kuantan, Malaysia

    Abolghasem Akbari

  2. Faculty of Natural Resources, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran

    Leila Sedaei & Mehdi Naderi

  3. NARC and IOES, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Azizan Abu Samah

  4. Faculty of Natural Resources, Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Sari, Iran

    Nazila Sedaei

Authors
  1. Abolghasem Akbari
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  2. Leila Sedaei
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  3. Mehdi Naderi
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  4. Azizan Abu Samah
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  5. Nazila Sedaei
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abolghasem Akbari.

Appendix

Appendix

See Appendix Tables 4, 5, 6, and 7

Table 4 Soil parameters obtained by soil sampling from the field required for the WEPP model
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Table 5 Channel summary (watershed method, off-site assessment) for the first 20 records
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Table 6 Flowpath summary (flowpath method, on-site assessment) for the first 20 records
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Table 7 WEPP watershed simulation for representative hillslopes and channels for the first 20 records
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Akbari, A., Sedaei, L., Naderi, M. et al. The application of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model for the estimation of runoff and sediment on a monthly time resolution. Environ Earth Sci 74, 5827–5837 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-015-4600-7

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