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In the highly-erodible Deep Loess region of Mississippi, USA, we investigated functions and effectiveness of silvicultural Streamside Management Zones (SMZs) in protecting water quality from impacts of logging. Twelve first-order watersheds (3–13ha) were treated in their entirety in one of the four ways: (1) Unrestricted harvest with no buffer, (2) Cable-only SMZ that allowed limited removal of logs from the buffer but no skidder traffic, (3) No-harvest SMZ that excluded all logging from the buffer, or (4) Reference that was unharvested. Logging removed 17% to 70% of hardwood sawtimber basal area in non-SMZ areas using group selection. For 15 months after logging, we monitored total suspended sediment (TSS), turbidity, temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, and dissolved oxygen. The unrestricted harvest increased TSS and the unrestricted harvest and cable-only SMZ treatments increased the temporal …