Learn About DEP

The DEP Interactive Map Manual is a user guide designed to help you navigate the Daily Erosion Project website and analyze soil erosion data in the U.S. Midwest. The manual walks you through accessing the interactive map, selecting variables like precipitation, runoff, detachment, and hillslope soil delivery, and viewing detailed daily estimates for specific watersheds identified by HUC12 codes. You can filter data by date (single or multiple dates), zoom into states and regions of interest, and hover over watersheds to see real-time data. The tool also allows you to download data in various formats and print customized maps for conservation planning and erosion assessment.

The information sheet explains how the Daily Erosion Project offers daily soil erosion and runoff data for farmers, landowners, conservation practitioners, and planners, allowing them to monitor small watershed impacts in real time. Users can spot high-risk areas, evaluate the effectiveness of conservation practices like cover crops and no-till, and observe how their landscape reacts to storms or management changes. This helps with better planning, monitoring, and resource targeting to enhance soil health and water quality where it is most needed.

The Middle Cedar Watershed Management Plan outlines a 20-year strategy to protect water quality, reduce flood risks, and promote soil health across communities in the watershed through collaborative planning and public engagement. Led by Emmons & Olivier Resources, Inc., the plan uses technical analysis, public outreach, and hazard assessments to prioritize conservation efforts in both urban and rural areas. Focused subwatershed plans offer tailored approaches for high-priority landscapes and communities, guiding effective conservation actions at the local level. Tools like the Daily Erosion Project and the Conservation Pyramid Framework support data-driven decision-making and encourage ongoing stakeholder involvement for continuous improvement.

The English River Watershed Improvement & Resiliency Plan is the result of over a year and a half of research, community engagement, and technical analysis focused on reducing flooding, enhancing water quality, and supporting the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. The plan addresses the area’s increasing frequency and severity of floods, which have caused significant property and infrastructure damage, as well as nutrient runoff that impacts habitats locally and downstream. Key recommendations were developed through a thorough assessment of watershed strengths and weaknesses, guiding future actions for both rural and urban communities. The plan highlights stakeholder collaboration and voluntary efforts, providing both summary findings and detailed technical appendices for deeper understanding and project support.

The Watershed Management Coalition collaborates to reduce flood risks and enhance water quality in the East and West Nishnabotna River watershed for future generations. Their objectives include forming partnerships among community, county, and regional groups, boosting flood resilience, and increasing public awareness about water management. The Coalition’s board consists of Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) and counties, meeting quarterly and encouraging public involvement. By emphasizing education and collective effort, the group aims to help local communities better prepare for and recover from floods while complying with state water quality standards.

The Upper Iowa River Watershed Resiliency Plan unites numerous partners to develop and implement strategies that enhance water quality, lower flooding risks, and strengthen community and landscape resilience across the watershed. The plan depends on detailed scientific analysis involving hydrology, soils, land use, climate data, and GIS tools to pinpoint both existing conservation efforts and future opportunities at the subwatershed level. Crafted as a blueprint for both public and private collaboration, the plan promotes keeping rainfall and nutrients on site by improving soil health, increasing diverse land cover, and adopting conservation practices on private lands, especially as rainfall extremes grow. Achieving success requires ongoing education, cooperation, adaptive management, and a multi-agency network to support implementation throughout the watershed.

The Upper Wapsi River Watershed Resiliency Plan is a collaborative guide focused on addressing flooding and water quality issues through targeted actions and multi-objective planning. The plan relies on thorough research, including hydrology, soils, land use, infrastructure, and detailed GIS analysis, to identify conservation priorities at subwatershed levels, making implementation more practical and relevant for residents and partners. Emphasizing the importance of holding rainfall and nutrients where they fall, the plan promotes improved soil health and land cover practices as the most affordable and effective initial defenses, especially as extreme weather becomes more common. Success depends on ongoing education, partnerships, and adaptive strategies, with a network of agencies and communities working together to strengthen long-term watershed resilience.

The "75th Soil Conservation" document recognizes decades of soil conservation work, reflecting on historical progress and the development of land management practices in Iowa. It emphasizes the vital role of partnerships, farmer education, and innovation in creating resilient soils and landscapes, which are essential for food security and ecosystem health. The report highlights ongoing challenges such as erosion, climate variability, and the need for stronger public engagement, policy support, and adaptive strategies moving forward. Using real-life examples and testimonials, it encourages continued dedication to conservation as a key foundation for thriving rural communities and sustainable agriculture.

Rick Cruse's TEDx talk highlights how soil, a foundation of civilization, is eroding in Iowa up to ten times faster than it is being naturally replaced, with direct implications for food, water, and climate resilience. He explains that historical societies collapsed after failing to protect soils, and today, extreme rainfalls and urban expansion increase pressure on farmland. Cruse warns that neither advanced technology nor high-yield genetics can replace healthy, well-managed soils, and shares how the Daily Erosion Project tracks ongoing losses to highlight urgent conservation needs. He passionately advocates for everyday soil stewardship, emphasizing conservation farming and public education. He ends with a playful poem urging everyone to support sustainable practices like no-till, cover crops, and prairie strips for a healthier future.

This 2024 study introduces the OFEtool, which downscales Daily Erosion Project (DEP) data from the watershed level to individual fields, enabling more precise identification of soil erosion hotspots in the Midwest. The OFEtool leverages real-time model inputs, such as climate, land use, and management, so users can estimate average runoff and soil loss at the pixel or field scale to target problem areas for conservation practices. Compared with traditional risk assessment models (GIS-based RUSLE and SVI-cc), the OFEtool consistently identifies vulnerable areas of the landscape but assigns lower risk levels due to its mechanistic, event-based approach and updated data inputs. The approach helps farmers and planners prioritize interventions, though further research is needed to adapt the tool to a broader variety of landscapes and validate it beyond its current domain.

This study found that photo analysis surveys are the most reliable method for estimating crop residue cover in regression models using satellite data, surpassing common windshield-based survey techniques, which are only effective for differentiating broad tillage categories like no-till versus conventional tillage. While photo analysis surveys offer greater accuracy, they are more costly and time-consuming to perform, but technological advances and data binning approaches could enhance their efficiency in the future. Remote sensing tools such as Google Earth Engine enable large-scale assessment of residue cover when paired with accurate ground truth data. The authors recommend citizen science, streamlined photo methods, and machine learning as innovative solutions to lower survey costs and broaden spatial coverage.

This 2024 report reviews the evolution, current status, and major updates of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP), a leading USDA model used to estimate runoff, soil loss, and sediment yields in cropland, forest, and rangeland settings. The WEPP model now features improved science, updated climate and management databases, better representation of water quality and tile drainage, and new web-based interfaces for field, watershed, and national conservation planning. Integration with real-time radar precipitation, LiDAR-derived topography, and NRCS land management data enables accurate, spatially consistent predictions, benefiting projects such as the Daily Erosion Project and other multi-agency efforts. The report highlights the expanding reach and ongoing research to validate WEPP for freeze-thaw cycles, ephemeral gully erosion, and long-term conservation decision-making across the U.S. and worldwide.

This study compares methods for predicting where ephemeral gullies form in agricultural landscapes using high-resolution LiDAR data, finding that a grid order (GORD) approach can locate gully head positions more reliably than traditional topographic index models—without the need for local calibration. Testing across eight Iowa watersheds showed that GORD prediction remained stable and acceptably accurate, even as soil and slope varied by region, while other methods required specific setup to maintain accuracy. The grid order approach is especially useful for conservation planning because it allows efficient, automated identification of vulnerable areas using detailed surface elevation models. However, more research is needed on steeper slopes and under different management practices, and the method’s accuracy depends on the quality of elevation data and field conditions.

Strategic planting of switchgrass in row crop systems, especially on slopes over 10%, significantly reduces soil erosion by more than 50% in the most vulnerable Midwest landscapes, while it only has a modest effect on water runoff. Modeling with the Daily Erosion Project shows that perennials planted on erosive slopes provide significantly greater soil conservation benefits, confirming the importance of targeting these areas rather than converting entire fields. Notably, these conservation benefits increase with higher annual rainfall and steeper slopes, offering an efficient way to protect soil and produce feedstock for bioenergy markets. The findings indicate that policies supporting the strategic placement of perennials not only preserve farm profitability but also help sustain long-term soil and water resources at regional levels.

The Daily Erosion Project uses real-time remote sensing and the WEPP model to generate daily estimates of rainfall, runoff, and soil erosion across agricultural landscapes. It helps conservationists understand how management, landscape, and weather influence soil loss. By utilizing high-resolution data on topography, soils, and crop management, the DEP measures erosion at watershed and hillslope levels, showing that the high erosion happens where steep slopes and row crops overlap. The framework's strong sampling and modeling methods are statistically reliable and produce estimates similar to USDA benchmarks, aiding data-driven conservation priorities. Although there are some limitations due to input data and the exclusion of gully erosion, the DEP shows that large parts of the Midwest are eroding at rates well above sustainable levels, urging urgent conservation efforts.

Both the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) and the Daily Erosion Project (DEP) use the same methods to digitize agricultural field boundaries, forming a shared geospatial framework. These boundaries are manually refined using the USDA-NASS Cropland Data Layer (CDL) and National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) aerial photography to ensure that, within the limitations of heads-up digitizing, each field polygon primarily represents a single crop type. This editing process enhances the accuracy of land use and crop rotation identification across both projects.

The 2016 overview of the Daily Erosion Project outlines how DEP leverages advanced modeling and remote sensing data to estimate rainfall, runoff, and soil erosion in nearly real time across over 2,000 watersheds in the Midwest. By applying the WEPP model along with high-resolution LiDAR elevation, weather, crop, and soil data, DEP monitors seasonal and yearly trends, showing that regional sediment delivery and runoff can vary up to six times based on weather and landscape conditions. This framework aids both local and large-scale conservation efforts, pinpointing years and areas with high erosion risk, especially in hilly, intensively farmed zones. Although expanding into other states and integrating various remote sensing products presented technical hurdles, DEP’s data-driven strategy allows for more targeted soil conservation across the diverse landscapes of the Midwest.

This paper assesses satellite imagery methods for estimating crop residue cover on Midwestern soils, emphasizing techniques that support soil conservation and erosion reduction. Using Landsat data, the authors developed and tested several indices, finding that the normalized difference residue index (NDRI, Bands 3 and 7) and normalized difference tillage index (NDTI, Bands 5 and 7) performed best, especially before crop emergence when vegetation interference is minimal. They also demonstrated that correcting for live vegetation with NDVI improves the accuracy of residue estimates, although some precision loss occurs once vegetation appears. Ultimately, these methods can offer timely, cost-effective monitoring for conservation practitioners and farmers, aiding in targeting residue management and tillage education where it is most needed.

Connected Papers is a visual tool that helps researchers discover and explore academic papers by generating interactive graphs showing relationships based on content similarity, not just citations. Users input a specific paper, keyword, or DOI, and receive a network map where nodes represent papers and edges display their degree of relatedness, measured by overlapping citations and references. The platform streamlines literature review by highlighting both foundational works and emerging research and integrates with scholarly databases like arXiv, PubMed, and Semantic Scholar. Connected Papers offers both free and premium plans, enabling an efficient overview, exploration, and organization of research in any academic field.

Enter the following citation and explore the array of academic papers connected to the Daily Erosion Project:

Gelder, B., Sklenar, T., James, D., Herzmann, D., Cruse, R., Gesch, K., & Laflen, J. (2018). The Daily Erosion Project–daily estimates of water runoff, soil detachment, and erosion. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 43(5), 1105-1117.

The "Voices of a Flyway" website follows the spring migration of birds along the Mississippi Flyway, sharing the stories of both birds and people impacted by human activity in six different ecosystems. The project includes a seven-episode podcast and interactive story maps filled with photos, videos, and sounds from locations visited during the journey. Episode 6 features the Tallgrass Prairie, where the Daily Erosion Project is highlighted as a tool that helps track and understand soil erosion dynamics in real time, which matters for bird habitat and conservation. Together, the site connects migration science, conservation, and community voices to encourage action on flyway health and landscape stewardship.

Repeated flooding and unprecedented spring storms in the Midwest have made soil erosion a serious issue for Iowa’s farmers, with over half of the region’s topsoil lost in just 50 years. Erosion is worst in bare, corn-and-soybean fields, where heavy rains create temporary gullies that quickly carry nutrient-rich topsoil away and into rivers, harming water quality and crop yields. The Daily Erosion Project estimates Iowa loses soil at least 16 times faster than it can naturally be replaced, increasing the risk of future crop failures, droughts, and water pollution across the Mississippi watershed. Farmers and scientists are discovering that cover crops like rye, though used on only a small portion of Iowa’s farmland, are a practical, effective way to keep soil in place, boost resilience, and “change what the country looks like” in the face of a changing climate.

The excerpt from "Storm Lake" highlights the serious challenges Iowa faces due to unsustainable farming practices, especially water pollution caused by fertilizer runoff. Art Cullen explains that surface waters in Iowa are now among the most polluted in North America, mainly because factory farms and industrial crop production increase erosion and nutrient loss. Despite this damage, Cullen suggests there are affordable solutions—like planting cover crops and reducing chemical use—that could help both farmers and local communities. The piece ultimately urges community action and political commitment to restore soil health and safeguard water quality for current and future generations.

Building agricultural resilience to climate change benefits everyone by supporting rural communities that provide essential services like food security, flood protection, and biodiversity. Green infrastructure projects, such as restoring wetlands, planting buffers, and managing grasslands, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water quality, and strengthen landscape resilience to extreme weather. New carbon market protocols reward farmers and ranchers for practices like compost application and methane reduction on rice fields, creating new income streams while encouraging sustainability. Momentum is growing as more farmers adopt climate-smart practices, but progress still relies on better coordination of financial, policy, and social incentives across government programs and markets.

Erosion costs Iowa farmers about $1 billion in lost crop yields each year, as the state’s rich topsoil is washed away faster than it naturally replaces itself. Iowa’s economy, largely based on agriculture, is at risk, especially since new research shows some regions are losing up to twelve times more soil than official government estimates, jeopardizing long-term productivity. Conservation efforts like cover crops and grass buffer strips can help, but funding from federal and state conservation programs has been insufficient. Competition for resources is intense, and land rental rates make long-term stewardship challenging for many farmers. Innovative modeling tools and community initiatives are being developed to better monitor erosion, prioritize funding, and promote practical solutions like terraces and no-till practices. However, a much more coordinated effort is needed to protect Iowa’s soil for future generations.

Rising corn and soybean prices in Iowa have prompted farmers to expand planting onto steep and marginal lands, raising the risk and rate of soil erosion well beyond government projections. Aggressive land conversion and changing weather patterns, especially more frequent and intense storms, mean that erosion in some townships is happening 10 to 50 times faster than soil is forming. While many farmers use conservation practices like terracing and no-till methods, enforcement of erosion control policies has weakened, and budget cuts threaten further progress. The Iowa Daily Erosion Project tracks this trend, showing that severe storms can cause single-day erosion losses far above sustainable levels, negatively impacting water quality and long-term crop productivity.