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This article describes the WEPS management submodel component which simulates the effects of typical cropping management practices, such as tillage, planting, harvesting, irrigation, or residue burning, at an operational level. Such management practices can affect the surface conditions, which in turn affect wind erosion potential. A variety of land management operations is simulated by identifying the primary physical processes involved and representing each individual operation as a sequenced set of those processes. The process categories include: 1) surface modification (the creation or destruction of ridges and/or furrow dikes that form oriented surface roughness, change the surface random roughness, and destroy the soil crust); 2) mass manipulation within soil layers (the changes in the aggregate size distribution and soil porosity, the mixing of soil and residue among soil layers, and soil layer inversion); 3) biomass manipulation (burying and resurfacing of residue, clipping the standing residue, flattening the standing residue, killing the live crop biomass, and removing biomass); and 4) soil amendments (the application of residue/manure for cover, seeding or planting crops, and irrigation).
