The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) has been the de-facto standard for soil erosion management studies since its seminal publication in the 1970's. Widespread use of the model is due, in part, to its simple empirical modelling structure and parsimonious parameterization; however, these benefits have also led to criticism of its relevance as a tool for estimating soil erosion. While the USLE has a strong empirical basis, it is regularly used beyond its intended design space, i.e., predicting soil loss from planar hillslopes, to predict distributed soil erosion rates at large spatial extents, which introduces uncertainty in model outcomes. In this paper, we use a case study for up-scaling the USLE to a large spatial extent to assess the variability in model outcomes from different model user's design choices. Our analysis demonstrates that a standardized and accredited methodology for up-scaling the USLE is needed to reduce uncertainty in model outcomes.

通用土壤流失方程 (USLE) 自 1970 年代开创性出版以来一直是土壤侵蚀管理研究的事实上的标准。该模型的广泛使用部分是由于其简单的经验建模结构和简约的参数化；然而，这些好处也导致对其作为估算土壤侵蚀工具的相关性的批评。虽然 USLE 有很强的经验基础，但它经常被用于超出其预期设计空间，即预测平面山坡的土壤流失，以预测大空间范围内的分布式土壤侵蚀率，这给模型结果带来了不确定性。在本文中，我们使用案例研究将 USLE 放大到更大的空间范围，以评估不同模型用户设计选择的模型结果的可变性。