The type of vegetation cover present in an area, greatly influences the surface runoff as well as the sediment yield. The objective of this paper is to establish a relationship between the type of vegetal cover and erosion by means of an empirical equation for soil loss. The proposed equation was calibrated using synthetic data obtained from a physically-based runoff-erosion model in which the erosion parameter values are representative of a cleared bare-land surface in the semiarid area of Paraíba State. A comparison between the values obtained from the equation and the observed data collected from several erosion plots in the Sumé Experimental Watershed with different conditions of vegetal cover and slope is presented as an evaluation of the influence of the vegetation cover on soil erosion.
vegetation cover; erosion model; semiarid region; sediment yield
