The study catchment, known as the W2 catchment, covers an
area of 1.38 ha. It forms part of a soil erosion monitoring programme
initiated by the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) in
1978, when three adjacent small catchments in Calabria (Southern
Italy) were instrumented by a ‘Soil Conservation Project’, in order to
monitor the effects of afforestation on their hydrological response
and sediment yield (Cinnirella et al., 1998). The catchment is
located near Crotone (35 m a.s.l., 390900200N, 170801000E) within
the ephemeral headwaters of the larger Crepacuore basin (Fig. 1),
which are incised into the Upper Pliocene and Quaternary clays,
sandy clays and sands underlying the local area. The climate of the
study area is typically Mediterranean, with a mean annual rainfall
for the period 1954e2012 of ca. 670 mm, at Crotone (10 km
distant). Most of the precipitation falls during the winter season
that extends from October to March. Further details regarding key
catchment characteristics, including the texture of the soils, are
provided in Table 1.