Playa Lakes Joint Venture - GIS Review - September 13, 2011

With support from the USGS Fort Collins Science Center, researchers have used future precipitation models and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) to examine sedimentation rates into Great Plains playas. The simple RUSLE equation combines topography, soil erosivity, land use, and annual precipitation to estimate erosion from a unit of upland area. Playa locations from the Playa Lakes Joint Venture, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory and the Kansas Data Access and Support Center were combined to create a region-wide playa dataset of roughly 78,000 playas. Researchers combined erosivity and texture data from the USDA Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO), local land use from the National Land Cover 2001 data set, land use erosivity from the 1997 National Resource Inventory, and slope from USGS digital elevation models to create a base layer. For more information, click here. Or contact Lucy Burris, PhD student, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .