Development of Soil, Land Use and Management Data Bases for Aeolian Research in Eight Western States of USA

Soil erosion by wind is a severe problem that degrades air quality and visibility in the Pacific Northwest US. Air quality is a regional concern that requires the use of an air quality model to simulate/forecast agricultural dust emissions, dispersion, and transport across a vast mosaic of land primarily used for crop production. We are attempting to simulate these processes using the AIRPACT-3 regional air quality forecast system linked/incorporated with the USDA-ARS Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS). The AIRPACT-3 system employs MM5 meteorological forecasts coupled with the EPA Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to forecast concentrations for a wide range of gas and particulate pollutants. AIRPACT-3 simulates the transport of air pollutants across eight western states and WEPS simulates dust emissions from agricultural soils. The AIRPACT-3 along with WEPS requires the use of soil properties, land-use, and land management databases. A comprehensive multiscale database of soil stratum properties was developed for the eight western states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana) based upon NRCS-STATSGO soil database. The database contains information on 30 soil properties across 10 soil layers. The EPA Biogenic Emissions Landcover Database (BELD3) provides percentages of USGS land cover types and 230 vegetation classes at a resolution of 1 km. The USDA-NRCS Crop Management Zone (CMZ) database contains detailed agricultural land management data. All databases were gridded into either 1 or 12 km cells across the eight state domain for regional air quality modeling. This presentation will introduce data sources and methodologies used for creating the databases and provide a case study in using these databases with the regional air quality model.