Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
to the RUSLE2 user interface. One enhancement
was the development of a rotation builder module
to allow creation of multi-year and multi-crop
rotations from concatenation of single-year man-
agement scenarios. This also allows rapid sub-
stitution of individual tillage system years as
treatment alternatives are explored during conser-
vation planning with producers. NRCS users also
expressed a need to group RUSLE2 runs for these
different alternative treatments into a 'worksheet
screen', and to assemble the worksheets for multi-
ple fields within RUSLE2, thereby representing an
entire farm. This need was addressed through the
development of the 'plan view' in the interface. As
states began to conduct field office training ses-
sions, an NRCS User Guide for the RUSLE2 inter-
face was developed and distributed. Additional
'how to' guides and references were prepared for
specific tasks, such as importing and exporting
database components, importing soils data from
NASIS soils descriptions, installing new versions,
and performing database updates.
As implementation and use of RUSLE2
expanded, and as NRCS and private sector users
gained experience in the model, regional advanced
RUSLE2 training sessions were conducted in all
regions of the US. These sessions built on the ini-
tial training and provided more in-depth training,
resulting in a deeper understanding of operations,
vegetations, and support practice records, of
modelling erosion and sediment deposition on
complex slopes, of database management, of
more complex screen views, and of organizing
outputs and dealing with complex management
scenarios. Additionally, as users became more
sophisticated, more complicated screen views
and printing templates that included more
detailed outputs and analysis were developed and
released.
direct computer-to-computer sharing of software
applications. Several 1-3 hour training sessions
were conducted via this latter method to provide
training to multiple states on new enhancements
and timely topics. Support personnel also proc-
essed hundreds or even thousands of individual
requests for additional vegetations, operations
and support practices, as RUSLE2 use expanded
across the US.
As various other applications were being devel-
oped, access to the 24,000
RUSLE2 crop man-
agement templates became necessary. A common
file exchange format was used so that these files
could be exported and utilized by the Wind
Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) model (Hagen,
1996). Several other applications have used this
file exchange format to utilize all subsets of the
RUSLE2 management templates.
+
8.3.4
Most significant application
enhancements
RUSLE2 includes a user convenience called the
'worksheet view' that allows comparisons or
combinations of a series of hillslope profiles,
each of which represents a single RUSLE2 ero-
sion/delivery calculation. For example, the
management alternative worksheet uses a sin-
gle climate, soil and topographic description,
but below that shows a table of management
alternatives and resulting erosion and sediment
delivery (Plate 4). Each line in the table repre-
sents a single RUSLE2 calculation, and all lines
share the common climate, soil and topography.
The idea is that each worksheet in this case rep-
resents a field, with a list of likely management
options and resulting erosion values. A group of
worksheets can then be combined/compared in
a 'plan', which can represent a farm, with each
worksheet representing a field within that farm
or land parcel. Within the worksheet, the user
can control which management alternatives are
brought into the plan for each field, allowing
for comparison of all the alternatives. Once
the planning decision is made, yes/no toggles
can be set to display only the scenarios repre-
senting the 'before' and 'after' management
(iii) Day-to-day support
A significant amount
of day-to-day support was provided to states and
field offices by the NRCS water erosion cooperat-
ing scientist and the national database manager
during the implementation years of 2001 through
to the present. This was provided through a com-
bination of telephone and e-mail support, and
