The water erosion is one of the main forms of soil degradation and it is highly affected by the soil cover and landscape slope. The objective of this work was to quantify the detachment rate and the soil loss due to water erosion under simulated rains in pastures, as well as to study the effect of land cover and the slope classes (< 9, 10-15, 25-30 and 35-40%) on soil loss in the Ribeirão Salomea wathershed. The treatments with four repetitions were: with and without pasture covering in four slope classes: < 9, 10-15, 25-30 and 35-40%. Thirty-two simulated rains were applied in plots delimited by galvanized metallic foils fixed in the soil and having a gutter at their lower part for runoff sampling. The results showed that the land cover influenced soil loss only within each slope classes. Soil losses increased with increasing slope classes. This phenomenon was higher in uncovered land than in the covered ones. The erodibility was 1.48 x 105 kg s m-4 for the evaluated Mollisol.
water erosion; simulated rains; soil loss
