CASE STUDY: The Universal Soil Loss Equation

Source:

High Performance Systems

Goal:

To build a computational model of soil creation and erosion as caused by vegetation, soil type, amount of rainfall, and slope of the soil.

Overview of the model:

In this model, we are interested in the amount of vegetation in an area and the amount of soil in the same area. These two items directly affect each other -- the more soil there is, the better the vegetation is able to grow. Conversely, better vegetation (more ground cover) clearly prevents soil from eroding, thus allowing the vegetation to have a better chance of growing.

In this model, vegetation can grow or die. Both the growth fraction of vegetation and the death fraction of vegetation are directly dependent on the effect of the soil on vegetation

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