Raindrop impact and runoff are the active agents of water erosion, which is influenced by soil roughness and cover, crop type and tillage system. Conservation tillage reduces water erosion in relation to conventional tillage by means of surface roughness and cover. This work was conducted in Centro de Ciência Agroveterinárias, in Lages, Santa Catarina, Brazil, from January 1993, to October 1998 to quantify soil and runoff losses under natural rainfall in the following soil tillage downslope systems: no-tillage, chisel plow plus disking and plowing plus disking, both on crop rotation and succession, and one bare soil tillage treatment with plowing plus disking. Soybean, oat, bean, vetch, corn, vetch, soybean, wheat, bean, fodder radish, corn and oat were cropped in rotation and wheat and soybean in crop succession. The soil was a clayey Inceptisol (Haplumbrept) with a slope of 0.102 m m-1. The no-tillage system reduced soil losses in 52, 68 and 98% in relation to chisel plus disking, and plowing plus disking and bare soil, respectively. Soil losses were 63% lower in the spring-summer than in the autumn-winter period. Soil losses were reduced by 37% with crop rotation in relation to crop succession, on the average of the soil tillage systems used in the trial. Water losses were similar to soil losses, differing in their magnitude.
conservation tillage; crop rotation; crop succession; no-tillage