WebStart WEPS: WEPS with Remote Data Access and Cloud-Computing Functionality

The Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) (Wagner, 2013) is a physical process-based wind erosion model developed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) (USDA-ARS, 2020). WEPS simulates daily climate and management-driven changes to the surface, vegetation, and soil. It estimates erosion losses when surface conditions and wind speeds are sufficient for soil movement. WEPS was released in 2010 to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) (USDA-NRCS, 2010) for assisting land managers in controlling wind erosion, establishing field-level plans for soil conservation, and determining wind erosion susceptibility as a part of national conservation programs to conserve the soil resource. The WEPS interface allows easy user access to national-scale input data. Four primary inputs are required to set up and execute a WEPS run: (1) field dimensions; (2) field location, which automatically determines applicable local climate data; (3) a representative soil; and (4) time series of management practices. These inputs require access to a significant amount of data, which are typically stored locally; however, maintaining these data on every computer running WEPS and keeping them current were problematic for the NRCS. To address these concerns, remote access functionality was incorporated into WEPS to deliver climate and wind data, as well as soil, operation, crop/residue, and management (a date-sequenced list of management operations) records. In addition, WebStart WEPS also features the option of running WEPS components remotely “in the cloud” as web services (Wagner et al., 2022). The Java WebStart framework provides a simplified delivery mechanism to users‘ computers and offers automatic updating capability.