Quantifying Erosion Reduction Benefits Resulting From the Adoption of Conservation Tillage Practices: Final Report

This final report summarizes a BIOAg-funded project that developed a modeling framework to evaluate how conservation practices reduce soil erosion across agricultural landscapes in eastern Washington. Using the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model, researchers simulated 30-year erosion outcomes under baseline, targeted, and best-case conservation scenarios across Whitman County watersheds. Results showed that erosion is highly concentrated on specific high-risk hillslopes, and that targeted implementation of conservation practices on these hotspots can significantly reduce overall erosion. In some cases, targeted approaches reduced average annual erosion rates by more than 60% and brought watersheds closer to Natural Resources Conservation Service tolerance levels. Compared to uniform adoption, targeted strategies improved efficiency by focusing interventions where they are most effective. The project provides a scalable framework for conservation planning and program evaluation, supporting more strategic use of practices such as reduced tillage and no-till in dryland cropping systems.