Jieliucun watershed in the hilly area of central Sichuan Basin was chosen as the typical study area.Based on field survey

geographic information system(GIS) software and Arc/Info

geographical database of the watershed

including digital elevation model(DEM)

landuse

soil and vegetation

was built.The watershed was divided into some uniform grids(10 m×10 m) in accordance with the GIS's function of raster spatial analysis.Integrated with GIS

Universal Soil Loss Equation(USLE) was applied to predict the amount of soil erosion in the watershed after studying the reasonable method for calculating factor values of USLE.Results show that the annual average mount of soil erosion is 1 244.7 t/(km2·a)

which is in the category of lightly eroded area.Sloping land covers 44.17% of the total area

but the amount of its soil erosion accounts for 77.93% of that in the watershed.The study demonstrates that sloping land is the major source of soil loss

and therefore rational sloping land use is the key to soil loss control.The case study of Jieliucun watershed indicates that the model is reliable compared with other related studies.