WEPS users, reviewers, testers, etc:

This is beta version (release 8.0) of WEPS 1.0. (Nov. 1, 2001)

Besides numerous minor bug fixes in the science code and the interface, the following improvements are also included in this version are:

WEPS 1.0 beta release 8.0 contains major enhancements over the previous "readme" documented version (release 7.4 .05) back in May 2001 on our website.   We have pushed out several updates to WEPS 1.0 since then, but I have not taken the time to provide much documentation on the changes made.  Since some of the most recent changes will affect how some users (primarily outside of NRCS) need to configure WEPS, it was definitely time for me to provide an updated "readme" file.

The biggest issue that non-NRCS uses need to be aware of is that WEPS, by default (i.e., no WEPS commandline arguments specified in the appropriate configuration panel),  will ignore soil input file water content values and estimate them and bulk densities upon the primary particle size distributions (sand, silt, clay) specified.  However, WEPS can now accept commandline arguments that controls what it expects in a soil input file.  The "old" WEPS behavior of expecting all water content values to be provided on a gravimetric basis is still available.

Below is a short list of the major enhancements made since the last release (7.4.05 in May 2001) when a comprehensive summary of changes was last provided.

Weather Generators

    * New cligen (version 5.110) .  This version is the version used by WEPP (Water Erosion Prediction Program) and employed by the Forest Service in their use of WEPP within their Agency.  It is an improvement over previous versions and all known bugs have been fixed.   All future versions of cligen are expected to remain common between WEPP and WEPS.  For those interested, the cligen website "http://horizon.nserl.purdue.edu/Cligen" documents the history of fixes to cligen, it's databases, etc. and has links to executables and source code.
    * Forest Service cligen database (2647 stations now compared to only 1071 stations in old cligen database used in previous versions of WEPS 1.0.  This is an increase of 1576 stations)  The FS has done extensive reviewing and quality control checking of the cligen database records as well as adding significantly to the number of available stations.
    * New windgen generator (windgen3).  This generator fixes problems discovered with older versions of windgen causing them to over-estimate the longterm erosive wind energy.  Basically, windgen now generates 24 hourly wind speed values per day rather than providing a representative daily windspeed with a max/min wind speed parameter (which WEPS would convert internally to subdaily windspeeds).

WEPS 1.0 user interface
There has been a significant effort to clean up the interface code to make it more maintainable and robust.  The following is a list of additional enhancements and bug fixes to WEPS 1.0 interface:

    *   MCREW (Management and Crop Rotation Editor for WEPS)
    *  Enhanced to allow the importation of multiple management files (partial rotations, templates, etc.), to allow a user to more easily create a complete WEPS rotation from other rotation files.
    * A user can now select specific operations from within the table view and manipulate their operation dates as a group from within the timeline view.
    * A user can now select a group of operations and increment (or decrement) the year those operations are performed.  This is useful when one is building a new rotation file from other rotation files or partial rotations.
    * A user can now "cycle" a multi-year rotation such that the operations occuring in the first year are moved to the second year, etc.  The operations occuring in the last year of the rotation would thus occur in year one.
    * The number of  years in a rotation is now automatically set to the minimum possible value, based upon the date of the last listed operation in the rotation.  This saves the user from manually setting it in most situations.
    * BUG FIX: Longstanding bug fixed that caused the dropdown choice lists to not display some operations and crops onscreen for the user to select if the MCREW window was near the bottom of the computer screen.
    * WEPS management files can now be put into subdirectories to allow the user to categorize groups of related management files.  The popup choice list on the main interface screen for selection of WEPS management files has been updated to reflect this enhancement.
    * BUG FIX: Calendar date popup now keeps the day when changing months.
    * BUG FIX:  Selected windgen and cligen stations are now always retained when opening a WEPS project.

    * Management file coversion Utility.
    * This utility provides the ability to convert WEPS management rotation files between WEPS 1.0 and NRCS (skeleton) formats.  The NRCS format is an XML description of a management file which includes only the operation date, operation name, and any crop associated with an operation.  No model specific operation or crop parameters are retained.  The intent is to provide a means of sharing basic management rotation information among different models within NRCS.  For example, RUSLE2 has a similar utility, thus, providing the ability to share management rotation files between RUSLE2 and WEPS 1.0.   This functionality is accessible within WEPS 1.0 via the "tools" menu option in MCREW.
    * An additional use of this utility is to "update" an older WEPS 1.0 management file with the most current operation and crop growth parameters available in the WEPS management operation and crop/decomp databases.

    * WEPS configuration options.
    * The configuration options in WEPS have been significantly revised and expanded, to make them easier to understand and locate.   All of them are accessible under the main window "Configuration" menu.  They are categorized as "User Settings", "System Settings", and "WEPS Developer Settings".
    * The most significant changes under the "User Settings" is the "Email Settings" configuration panel.  We think we have addressed most problems users have had sending email to us via the "email client".  The most important setting in this configuration screen is for users still having a problem using the email client is the "SMTP mailhost internet address".  Those users should change it from the default of "mailhost.weru.ksu.edu" to their ISP provider's SMTP mailhost address.  (Many users having such a problem are behind a firewall).  An easy way to determine the correct address to use is to look at the setting used for your normal email program, e.g. Outlook Express, Netscape Messenger, Eudora, etc.)
    * The most important configuration panel under the "System Settings" submenu is "System Executable File Locations".  This panel specifies the path/names of the weather generators and WEPS science program the WEPS 1.0 interface will use.  Also, it specifies any commandline options desired.  Specific settings of importance, especially to non-NRCS users, are the WEPS executable commandline options that specifies the expected units water content values are presented in the soil input files to WEPS.  Specific information regarding these WEPS commandline arguments are:

                * If the commandline option field is blank,  then this implies that the water content values are "estimated from the primary particle size distributions specified for the layers in the soil input file".  Thus, the water content and bulk density fields in the input soil file are ignored in this case.  The corresponding commandline option that matches this default case is:  "-S3 -P".  NOTE!! This is different than what older versions of WEPS 1.0 assumed, which was that ALL water content values were obtained directly from the soil input file and were assumed to be on a gravimetric basis.
                * If one wants the original old behavior for WEPS, where both 1/3 bar and 15 bar water content values are on a gravimetric basis, then the following commandline options are needed:  -S2 -P
                * Here is a list of the valid options and a brief description of each:
                 
                  cmdline options            1/3 bar            15 bar
                                                            -                      -
                  -S0 -P                               vol                  vol
                  -S1 -P                               vol                 grav
                  -S2 -P                              grav                grav
                  -S3 -P                                  -                     -

                  The "-S3 -P" option will compute water content and bulk density values internally within WEPS based upon each soil layer's texture.  The current default soil input format matches this option.   The reason for the change was to accomodate the current set of soil files provided with the WEPS 1.0 downloads.  The current list of soil files provided were obtained from the NRCS NASIS database are not consistent in the units in which the water content values are provided.
                  NOTE:   The "-P option is not required for the specification of soil water content input format, but to signify the path to the current WEPS project, which the interface specifies.  Adding the "-P" option here allows both the newer versions of WEPS and the older versions of WEPS to work with the current interface.  This "backward compatibility" will likely be removed in the future.
                   
    *  General interface bug fixes and useability enhancements
          * Revision of main screen menubar and menu selection items to make layout more logical.
          * Revised lots of the interface configuration and startup code to make the WEPS 1.0 user interface more robust and maintainable.

WEPS science  code changes

* Hydrology update
* The entire Hydrology submodel has been revised.  The submodel now correctly estimates runoff, infiltration, evaporation, and soil water movement within the soil as designed.  This has increased the runtime somewhat for WEPS, but all the problems in WEPS that have been identified as being "hydrology" related have been resolved to our knowledge.

* NRCS NASIS Soils problems
* All current soils files supplied with the WEPS 1.0 downloads have been obtained from NRCS's NASIS national soils database.  This is the intended source of soils data that NRCS plans to use when WEPS 1.0 is implemented in their Agency.  After the "hydrology" corrections were implemented, it became clear that they weren't the source of all the errors being attributed to hydrology.  We discovered that there were inconsistencies in the NASIS soils data.  NRCS had originally informed us that all water content values in NASIS were reported on a "gravimetric basis", and indeed, that is what their NASIS documentation says.  However, we discovered that evidently some of the data was on a "volumetric basis" (1/3 bar values), which NRCS verified.  After deliberating among themselves, NRCS decided that they would change NASIS to report all water contents on a "volumetric basis" as that was the more appropriate units for most of their models.
* Additional problems regarding the NASIS soils data have also appeared as NRCS began making the above mentioned changes.  It became evident that some states had their soils data entered into the database in the specified units (gravimetric) and some did not.  Also, if the data was lab or field measured values, their updating scripts would leave those values unaltered (under the assumption that these values were "correct"), thus some values would change and others wouldn't.  In short, there was no guarantee, at least for us, that: 1) the values provided for any given soil were in the expected units (gravimetric or volumetric), 2) some soils could have layer values in one set of units and other layer values in another (e.g., some of the data values could be "measured" and some not), and 3) that the bulk density values specified for the soils were even correlated with the resulting water content values.  NRCS is actively addressing all of these issues at this time and clearly need to have them resolved prior to implementing WEPS within their Agency.
* In the meantime, we have provided an additional means in WEPS to sidestep a lot of these "NASIS soils" issues.  An additional option (mentioned above) can be specified to have WEPS estimate the water content values (1/3 bar, 15 bar) and bulk densities for each soil layer internally based upon the sand, silt and clay percentages (in fact it is set to be the default).  This approach doesn't reflect the affects of organic matter and isn't as accurate for some classes of soils as we would like, but at least it avoids the NASIS soils issues mentioned above.  However, it does provides some "consistency" in expected results when one changes from one soil type to another which has given many of our reviewers problems.

* Erosion update
* Corrections have been made to the erosion submodel that should allow it to reflect the "armoring" of soil surfaces that will occur during large (several hour) erosion events on many fields.
* Corrections have been made to more correctly reflect the protective ability of short standing residue.

* Crop growth
* Modified crop growth model to be able to run in one of two modes: a) estimation of total heat units to grow crop based upon "days of uninterrupted growth to materity" for the crop and the average "growing degree day" heat units during the growing season obtained from the selected climate station data,  and b) "growing degree day heat units required to reach maturity" for the specified in crop database file.  Both of these parameters are available in the crop database file.  Another flag in the database file specifies which method is applied for that particular crop entry.  The user has the ability, via the "drilldown" screen on the crop field within MCREW to change either the values used or the method to apply.  Option a) has been the historical default in the past.  It was updated to use the climatic information between planting and harvesting rather than "number of days between planting and harvesting - starting with Jan 1".
* Resolved LAI problem on day wheat breaks dormancy.
* Corrected error in seasonal heat unit algorithm.
* Other bug fixes.

* Soil submodel
* Corrected snow and wet-to-dry adjustments for soil albedo.
* Updated aggregate stability routines to include all processes (freeze/dry, freeze/thaw, wet/dry, etc.)

* Crop/decomp database updates
* Updated "days to maturity" values for winter crops.
* Corrected data for hard red winter wheat and cotton.
* Expanded list of sorghum and corn crop choices.
* Lowered temperature threshold for winter dormancy.
* Many other crops added to list, principally vegetable crops: tomatos, cabbage, pineapples, onions, etc.

* Management operations database
* Added specific operations for burning residue, harvesting soybeans, harvesting tobacco, baling, windrowing, sandfighter, and probably others.
*
Here is a list of things that we are currently working on:

    * A yearly crop yield and biomass report option.
    * An update to the "Project Summary" report.
    * Additional minor fixes to MCREW (dealing with editing operation/row direction values).
    * An overhaul of how WEPS deals with "Projects".  This will eventually allow the user to place WEPS projects into subdirectories, rename them, move them, delete them, etc.  Also, it will retain the output (and the inputs that generated the output) for each WEPS run made, thus, allowing the user to compare multiple run scenarios easily.
    * Extending the crop and management operation databases to allow the user to group them under common themes, e.g., "small grains", "forages", etc. for crops and   "primary tillage", "harvesting", "cultivation" operations, etc.  In addition, the ability to rename, move, and delete operations and crops will be provided.
    * An initial update to the currrent output report forms.  Then, a new set of output report forms based on new code to provide more flexible WEPS output selections by the user, resolution of output printing problems, etc.
    * Corrections to the current windgen database that more accurately adjusts the represented wind speeds to an anemometer height of 10 meters.  Then expansion/replacement of windgen station records based upon updated and quality checked wind data recently released by the National Climatic Data Center.
    * Direct access to NRCS's SSURGO soils database from within WEPS 1.0.  The SSURGO database is a Microsoft Access database that is populated from the NASIS soils database.  The user will end up having the option of selecting ASCII soils files from a directory (the current method) or from the SSURGO database (if available on the user's machine).

You can retrieve the latest versions of WEPS 1.0 as well as any documentation available from the following website address:

	http://www.weru.ksu.edu/weps

Either use the prominent link provided or select the "Downloads" link at the
top of the page and follow the instructions on filling out the registration form.

Please use this method even if you have registered in the past to obtain copies
rather than going directly to the download page URL as this provides us with a
means of keeping track of who downloads a copy and when.