**Author details**

interception, infiltration and runoff as well as soil detachment and transport) and water and sediment routing associated with its complexity (Nearing et al., 2005; Licciardello et al., 2009). Probably, the scale of soil property measurements within the available geomorpho‐ logical database does not correspond to the discretisation scale of the Ganspoel watershed (characterized by land use heterogeneity and crop schedule complexity, as mentioned

The implementation of the AnnAGNPS in two small agricultural watersheds (Cannata, southern Italy, and Ganspoel, central Belgium) provided interesting indications about mod‐ el's prediction capability of surface runoff, peak flow and sediment yield and thus about its

The study case of the Cannata watershed has highlighted a good prediction capability of run‐ off and erosive events, particularly for the events of highest relative magnitude (higher than 15 mm and 100 kg ha-1 respectively); a good accuracy has been achieved also for monthly runoff volumes simulation. The over-estimation of runoff volumes at yearly scale has been limited by setting up the initial CNs in the calibration phase, with mean differences between observed and simulated yearly values lower than 20%. Peak flow predictions have been satisfactory on‐

tographs available for the hydrologic sub-model has not hallowed to eliminate the high overestimation of the most intense peak flows. On the whole, the results provided by the analysis of this study case encourage further efforts in order to verify the model transferability to the cli‐

The evaluation of AnnAGNPS in the Ganspoel watershed has highlighted a good prediction capability only for the most intense runoff events (higher than 1 mm) in absence of calibra‐ tion. The prediction capability of peak flows and sediment yields have resulted instead un‐ satisfactory (as also highlighted by the low coefficients of efficiency): the poor model's sediment yield predictions reflect the unreliability of simulated values of peak flows, re‐

The influence of the limited availability of geomorphologic parameters (balanced by the esti‐ mation, even reasonable, of some input parameters) as well as of hydrological observations (which even has advised against realistic calibration processes) on the model performance

However, the availability of proper climatic (allowing set-up of input meteorological data) and GIS sub-routines (helping to process available DEM and themes) together with the userfriendly graphical interfaces in the model software made easy in AnnAGNPS the input data processing. In spite of the large number of input parameters required (more than 100), as for the majority of continuous, physically-based and distributed models, we have remarked a basical easiness of model implementation at the Cannata watershed, thanks to the good

/s); the utilisation of the different synthetic hye‐

above) performed by the GIS interface of the data-intensive AnnAGNPS model.

**8. Conclusion**

26 Research on Soil Erosion Soil Erosion

applicability in the experimental conditions.

ly for the less intense events (lower than 0.3 m3

quired as input by the erosive sub-model.

can not be excluded.

matic conditions typical of the semi-arid Mediterranean environment.

Demetrio Antonio Zema1\*, Giuseppe Bombino1 , Pietro Denisi1 , Feliciana Licciardello2 and Santo Marcello Zimbone1

\*Address all correspondence to: dzema@unirc.it

1 Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Department of Agro-forest and Enviromen‐ tal Science and Technology, Italy

2 University of Catania, Department of Agrofood and Environemental System Management, Italy

**Notes:** The contributions of the authors to this work can be considered equivalent.
