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Extreme high‐magnitude and low‐frequency storm events in arid zones provide the necessary runoff to entrain sediments from source areas and therefore dictate the linkages between hillslopes and channels. Nevertheless, the erosive impact of large storms remains difficult to predict. Most of the uncertainty lies in the lack of topographic change maps associated with single hydro‐meteorological events. Consequently, event‐based erosion models are poorly constrained and their extrapolation over long time periods remains uncertain. In this study, a 15‐month Sentinel‐1A coherence time series, optical and field data are used to map the spatial patterns of erosion after the 5‐day storm occurred on March 2015, in the Atacama Desert. The coherence change detection (CCD) analysis suggests that temporal loss of coherence is related to variations in soil moisture, while permanent loss of coherence is related to …