Evaluating the ability of the Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) to simulate near-surface wind speeds in the Inland Pacific Northwest, USA

Abstract

Wind speed is one of the main control factors of wind erosion and dust emissions, which are major problems in arid and semiarid regions of the world. Accurately simulating highly precise hourly wind speeds is critical and cost-efficient for land management decisions with the goal of mitigating wind erosion and land degradation. The Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) is a process-based, daily time-step model that simulates changes in the soil–vegetation–atmosphere. However, to date, relatively few studies have been conducted to test the ability of the WEPS in simulating hourly wind speeds. In this study, the performance of the WEPS model was tested in the Inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW), where wind erosion is a serious problem. Hourly wind speeds were observed and simulated by the WEPS at 13 meteorological stations from 2009 to 2018 using the WEPS hourly wind speed probability histogram. Owing to increasing wind shear, the model is not as precise in reproducing high wind speeds. The WEPS inadequately simulated the hourly wind speeds at six of the 13 stations, with a low index of agreement (d < 0.5). The complex regional topography may be one of the reasons for this lack of agreement, because the WEPS’s performance of interpolation relies on spatial distances and surface complexity. Therefore, we validated the model using another wind-speed database to eliminate the impact of spatial interpolation. The performance of the WEPS was improved after removing the impact of spatial interpolation, producing d values > 0.5 at nine of the 13 stations. Our results suggest that the WEPS can accurately simulate hourly wind speeds and assess wind erosion in the absence of interpolation, whereas the model may be uncertain when invoking spatial interpolation. Some evidence also suggests that the model may have a tendency to underestimate observed hourly wind speeds. Pragmatically, this suggests that model users should consider the possibility that WEPS may underestimate wind erosion risk in the iPNW and plan implementation of conservation practices accordingly.