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Does DEP have student training?

Yes. The Daily Erosion Project offers training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students who have an interest in Agricultural Conservation and Geographical Information Systems. See the complete list of current and former students below. If you are interested in applying contact Brian Gelder (bkgelder@iastate.edu) or Claudette Sandoval-Green (claudenm@iastate.edu).

Former Assistant Scientist

Andrea Einck 2018

Former Graduate Students

Rishikumar Suresh-Kumar, M.S. Candidate, 2018 – 2020

 GIS Technicians

  • Seyedehsepideh Shanemati 2022-2023
  • Kay Ercse 2022-2023
  • Nafisa Anjum 2022-2023
  • Samuel Odoom 2022-2023
  • Lauren Bishop 2022-2023
  • Thomas Kosacz 2019 -2023
  • Yusuf Tayo 2022
  • Fatema Nourin 2022
  • Mina Ghanaatian Jahromi 2022
  • Alvaro Quintano Vazquez 2022
  • Joseph Jennings 2022
  • Abiola Adesanya 2022
  • Alec Gustafson 2019 – 2020
  • Yaw Kwarteng 2019
  • Kyle Davis 2019
  • Kelsey Karnish 2019
  • Molly Mannel 2019
  • Rakibul Ahasan 2019
  • Anne Dinges 2018 - 2019
  • Dustin Ehret 2018 - 2019
  • Noah Heckman 2017 - 2019
  • Louise Jennings 2018 - 2019
  • Abe Diemer 2017 – 2018 
  • Brian Jensen 2017 – 2018
  • Jordan Miller 2017 - 2018
  • Johnathan Zander 2017 – 2018
  • Andrea Einck 2016 – 2018
  • Dominic Boffeli 2016 – 2017
  • Leah Ellensohn 2016 – 2017
  • Kara Gardiner 2016 – 2017
  • Lakota Kirst 2016 - 2017
  • Josh McDanel 2016 – 2017
  • Spencer Pech 2016 - 2017
  • Scott Schilb 2016 - 2017
  • Kurt Wilson 2016 – 2017
  • Angela Snyder 2016
  • Allie Oder 2016
  • Scott Johnson 2015 - 2018
  • Marina Reasoner 2015 - 2016 
  • Heloiza Abreu 2015 - 2016
  • Craig Albers 2015
  • Dan Minchk 2015

Why does soil erosion matter?

Soil erosion is the movement of soil particles down and from sloping land. These moving soil particles reduce soil productivity and degrade water quality.  Soil erosion thins and can completely remove topsoil, the soil layer richest in organic matter and plant nutrient concentration. These lost nutrients must be replaced for crop production purposes, adding extra cost in addition to lost crop yield potential.

What is DEP?

The Daily Erosion Project (DEP) estimates soil erosion and water runoff occurring on hill slopes in Iowa and surrounding states. Estimates are based on hill slope conditions (e.g. topography, crop, precipitation) identified via remote sensing tools. From these estimates, the DEP team posts daily estimates of average hill slope soil loss (and water runoff) occurring for each watershed in the DEP coverage area. 

What is WEPP?

WEPP is an erosion prediction model applicable to small watersheds and can simulate up to large fields, mimicking the natural processes important in soil erosion. Everyday it updates the soil and crop conditions that affect soil erosion. When rainfall occurs, the planted crop and soil characteristics are used to determine if surface runoff will occur; then the program will compute estimated sheet, rill, and channel soil erosion detachment and deposition.

What is a HUC and watershed?

A watershed is any land area that channels rainfall and snowmelt to creeks, streams, and rivers, and eventually to outflow points such as reservoirs, bays, and the ocean. A HUC, or hydrologic unit code, is a classification that identifies a watershed by size and location.  

Which geographical areas does DEP cover?

Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Wisconsin.

Can I request a presentation?

Yes! Contact Laura Frescoln, Grant Specialist for the Iowa Water Center, and she will arrange a presentation.  

What are the computational details behind DEP?

As of July 2016, DEP makes over 200,000 WEPP model runs each day. The WEPP model itself is a single threaded job, but thankfully only takes a second to run for the 10+ years we are simulating. Even at a one-second execution time, having 200k runs means that we have to implement some sort of parallel execution to have all the runs complete within a day (only ~100k seconds in a day!). 

DEP's goal is to have daily output from the previous day by approximately 6 AM of the current day. This represents a maximum time window of about six hours to accomplish the following tasks:  

  • Update input climate files with yesterday's data 
  • Run the WEPP model 200k times 
  • Process the WEPP output files and create summaries within the database 

As of this writing, the DEP processing is done on a Dell PowerEdge R820 with 4 physical processors (48 threads), 256 GB of memory, and two mirrored 1 TB SSD drives. These assets permit the DEP execution to complete by about 5 AM each morning. Ironically, the most computationally "expensive" component of this processing is the input-output associated with the numerous ASCII files used by the WEPP model. The SSD drives allow these small operations to complete with limited latency. 

The parallelization happens with a programming script that launches multiple instances of WEPP at the same time. This Python code uses the standard library multiprocessing to proctor the runs. Again, the SDD drives really make this possible as the multiple jobs are not stuck in I/O wait. 

How does the erosion model work?

The Daily Erosion Project (DEP) uses a tested and proven soil erosion model (the Water Erosion Prediction Project model or WEPP) that estimates soil erosion and water runoff occurring on hill slopes.  Estimates are based on hill slope conditions: for example, slope steepness, slope length, tillage used and crop growing in each field, soil type and rainfall.  The conditions on each hill slope are identified from remote sensing: LiDAR for topography, satellite imagery for soil and crop management and field boundaries, NEXRAD radar for precipitation, and electronic data bases for details such as soil type.  Sheet and rill soil erosion estimates are made for approximately 240,000 randomly selected hill slopes in Iowa with a similar density of hill slope erosion estimates occurring across all of the DEP coverage area.  From these DEP erosion estimates, we post daily the average hill slope soil loss (and water runoff) occurring for each HUC12 watershed in the DEP coverage area.