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Predicting cumulative watershed effects of fuel management with improved WEPP technology
Elliot, W.J., and J.Q. Wu. 2005.
Predicting cumulative watershed effects of fuel management with improved WEPP technology.
In Moglen, G.E., ed.,
Managing Watersheds for Human and Natural Impacts: Engineering, Ecological, and Economic Challenges.
Proceedings of the 2005 Watershed Management Conference, July 19-22, 2005, Williamsburg, VA;
Sponsored by Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
11 p.
Keywords: Watershed management, Predictions, Fuels, Fires, Forests, cumulative effects, WEPP
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Available to purchase: By subscription from ASCE
Abstract:
The increase in severe wildfires in recent years is due in part to an abundance
of fuels in forests. In an effort to protect values at risk, and decrease the severity of
wildfires, forest managers have embarked on a major program of fuel reduction. Past
research has shown that such fuel reduction may have minimal impact at a hillslope
scale, but when numerous hillsides are disturbed within a watershed over a number of
years, the cumulative effect of such disturbances may be unacceptable. In addition,
road networks are necessary to support fuel management activities by providing
access for thinning crews, small diameter timber extraction, and fire crews. These
road networks were frequently designed and constructed to minimize cost, and do not
necessarily minimize adverse watershed impacts. Research findings from wildfire,
fuel management, and roads will be presented to provide a context for predictive
modeling. There are some new predictive tools to aid in watershed analysis. These
include the GeoWEPP GIS wizard, the online WEPP:Road Batch processor and
WEPP FuMe fuel management analysis tools, and a revised WEPP hillslope model
with improved water balance and lateral flow capabilities. In this paper, we use these
new technologies to explore the sources of sediment and runoff within a typical
forested watershed. The paper shows improvements in runoff prediction with the
revised WEPP model, as well as the relative importance of roads, wildfire, prescribed
fire, and thinning operations in generating sediment at the hillslope and watershed
scales. The analysis of the performance of the modified WEPP interface showed that
there are problems within the WEPP Watershed stream flow routing routines that will
need to be addressed before use of this modified model can be recommended.
Moscow FSL publication no. 2005d
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