High forest cover does not preclude localized modeled erosion pressure: A screening and management-prioritization assessment of the Warjori Watershed, West Papua, Indonesia

Aggregate watershed indicators can obscure concentrated environmental pressure in mountainous tropical landscapes. This study integrated forest cover, regulatory permanent-vegetation cover, statutory critical-land classes, and a land-unit Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) scenario to screen land condition and identify management priorities in the 152,782.33-ha Warjori Watershed, West Papua, Indonesia. The assessment used land cover, critical-land status, 2025 monthly rainfall, soil units, slope classes, soil depth, and supporting spatial data. Primary and secondary forest covered 84.14% of the watershed, while regulatory permanent vegetation covered 91.92%. Critical and Very Critical land accounted for 6.26%; however, Moderately Critical to Very Critical classes together accounted for 88.06%. The erosion-index dataset contained 4,270 land units covering 152,733.91 ha. The 2025 scenario yielded area-weighted modeled soil loss of 19.54 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, area-weighted tolerable soil loss of 5.02 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, and a weighted mean unit-level erosion index of 8.72. High and Very High erosion-index classes covered 51.35% of the modeled area. These results reveal a scale mismatch between favorable aggregate vegetation indicators and locally elevated modeled pressure. Management screening supports four complementary actions: forest protection, preventive management of Moderately Critical land, rehabilitation of degraded non-forest sites, and field verification of high-index units. Because rainfall covered one year, LS was class-based, several coefficients were transferred, P was fixed at 1.0, the tolerable-loss lookup was incomplete, and field validation was unavailable; the estimates should be interpreted as management-screening evidence rather than measured erosion or sediment delivery.