A method for using WEPS to map wind erosion risk of Alberta soils

Alberta has 27 million hectares of agricultural land, a significant portion of which is at risk to wind erosion. Combining recently completed provincial digital soils maps (Agricultural Region of Alberta Soil Inventory Database—AGRASID) with geographically referenced spatial weather data and land management descriptions (crop rotations plus cultivation practice) provided an opportunity to evaluate, using the Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) model, wind erosion risk on soils/land in the dominantly agricultural portion of Alberta. Since WEPS is a point model, it requires comparatively specific environmental and management information. We used a quarter section (65 ha) as a typical situation for a WEPS estimation. Using these data, the erosion risk for each of the 28,000 AGRASID polygons in Alberta was obtained by the sum of the separate contributions of each soil–management–climate combination. The WEPS model with appropriate databases provides a means to make more spatially explicit, and hopefully more accurate, assessments of wind erosion risks as affected by changing agricultural management