Abstract:To understand combined effects of erosive rainfall and tillage implementation onwater erosion processes and effects of sediment reduction from sloping farmland during the maize growing season, a field plot experiment was conducted to evaluate the potential benefits of surface protection tillage under natural rainfall conditions including five management practices, which were conventional tillage system as control (CK), contour tillage without surface cover (CT), CT with addition of organic matter (CT+OM), CT with a cover of plastic (CT+PM), and CT with a wheat straw mulching (CT+SM), respectively. Results showed that runoff volume and sediment concentration from surface covered plots were significantly smaller than that from control plots. Compared with conventional sloping tillage systems, CT, CT+OM, CT+PM, and CT+SM decreased annual runoff discharge 15%, 26%, 36% and 35%, and reduced sediment yields 12% to 61%, 25% to 70%, 38% to 70%, and 46% to 75%, respectively. Soil erodibility increased with rainfall amount and runoff discharge, while its increase rate decreased and intended to stable ones. We proposed a power model were proposed to estimate the increase tendency between soil erodibility and runoff discharge with R2 of 0.70 to 0.87 (p<0.05). While a logistical model was proposed to fit relationship between soil erodibility and rainfall amount with R2 of 0.85 to 0.91 (p<0.05). Soil erodibility indicators under conventional sloping tillage systems was 0.029 kg·m-2·mm-1. Soil erodibility values under CT and CT+OM were 0.025 and 0.023 kg·m-2·mm-1, and decreased 17% and 24% compared with CK. Soil erodibility values under CT+PM and CT+SM were lower than 29% and 38% than those of CK, with average values of 0.021and 0.018 kg·m-2·mm-1, respectively. The above results indicated that surface protections by crop straw mulching or plastic cover combined with contour tillage are to be the good management practices to reduce soil loss by water erosion in regions of intense agricultural activity. This study provides a theoretical basis for the control of soil and water loss, and reduction of agricultural non-point sources pollution from sloping farmland during maize growing season.