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Surface stones affect erosion rates by reducing raindrop-driven detachment and protecting the original soil against overland flow induced-hydraulic stress. Numerous studies have shown that the effect of surface stones on erosion depends on both the stone characteristics (eg, size, distribution) and the soil properties. The aim of this study was (i) to quantify how the stone characteristics affect the total sediment concentration and the concentrations of the individual size classes,(ii) to test if stones affect preferentially a particular size class within the eroded sediment and (iii) to determine whether the 1D Hairsine-Rose (HR) erosion model can represent the experimental data.

A series of laboratory experiments were conducted using the 2-m× 6-m EPFL erosion flume for different rainfall intensities (28 and 74 mm h-1) and with a gentle slope (2.2%). Experiments were conducted for different scenarios (stone coverage, rainfall intensity and soil initial conditions). Two coverage proportions (20 and 40%) were tested.