Evaluating Wind Erosion Problems With WEPS

Lubbock County, Texas

Following are some example management scenarios that we will use to evaluate a wind erosion problem in the Northwest area of Texas.

Situation 1 - Continuos Cotton rotation

The scenario to be evaluated is:

. The farm is located in Lubbock County, TX
. The Cligen Station is Lubbock and the Windgen Station is Lubbock
. The Soil Map Unit used in the evaluation is Amarillo_4_100_LFS
. The original Cropping system is Continuos Cotton, stripper
. The field size is 2640' X 2640' (160 acres)
. The WEPS evaluation of the cropping system will be run for 5 rotation cycles
. Barriers - None

Below is the Continuos Cotton rotation including the dates and field operations (Fig. 1).

Cotton (Yield of 1/2 Bale)

Figure 1. A continuous rotation of cotton.

Situation 2 - Cotton_Milo rotation

When we expand the 1 year cotton rotation to include Milo, we can add the operations, dates of operations, and the Milo crop directly to the original Cotton rotation or we can build a separate template for Milo and then insert the new template in the rotation. We recommend the option of building a separate template for Milo and then inserting it into the existing Cotton rotation. The new single year template for Milo begins by opening MCREW, clicking on "File", then click on "New" and this will drop a clean MCREW screen down. With the clean MCREW screen we just start entering dates and operations as instructed in the earlier lessons on MCREW. The single year cropping scenario for Milo should be saved as a template. Saving a template begins by clicking on "file" and then "save as a template". The list of dot man folders and files will drop down. Here we can open a folder before saving, or we can go directly to the window on the bottom of the list called "File name", remove the * and then type in the name of the new template we are saving. To finalize we click "Save" on the bottom right. We now have a new single year Milo template and will add it to our existing Cotton scenario.

Below is the 2 year rotation of Milo_Cotton, including the dates and field operations (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. A two year rotation of Milo and Cotton.

Situation 3 - Cotton_Winter Wheat rotation

Below is the 2 year rotation of Cotton_Winter Wheat including the dates and field operations (Fig. 3). We recommend the option of building the rotation using separate templates of Cotton and WinterWheat. However, once you have a template of Cotton_Winter Wheat, you can use it directly from your dot man files.

Figure 3. A two year rotation of Cotton and Winter Wheat.