LAUSR

While it is well recognized that vegetation can affect erosion, sediment yield and, over longer timescales, landform evolution, the nature of this interaction and how it should be modeled is not obvious and may depend on the study site. In order to develop quantitative insight into the magnitude and nature of the influence of vegetation on catchment erosion, we build a landscape evolution model to simulate erosion in badlands, then calibrate and evaluate it against sediment yield data for two catchments with contrasting vegetation cover. The model couples hillslope gravitational transport and stream alluvium transport. Results indicate that hillslope transport processes depend strongly on the vegetation cover, whereas stream transport processes do not seem to be affected by the presence of vegetation. The model performance in prediction is found to be higher for the denuded catchment than for the reforested one. Moreover, we find that vegetation acts on erosion mostly by reducing soil erodibility rather than by reducing surface runoff. Finally, the methodology we propose can be a useful tool to evaluate the efficiency of previous revegetation operations and to provide guidance for future restoration work. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.