Abstract: Soil erosion characteristics of small watersheds not only reflect land use and management condition of watersheds, but also determine the safety of water body environment and water conservancy establishment in the lower reaches of river. Three small watersheds with different catchments area, physical characteristics and land use type were employed to investigate the responding characteristics of soil erosion under different storm types and land use types from 1999 to 2000 in the purple soil area. Results showed that the sediment transport modulus over the woodland-dominated watershed is the least under the erosion of ML-type precipitation and IM-type precipitation. The average modulus is 866 kg·hm^-2. In contrast, the modulus over the farmland - dominated watershed is the highest with a mean modulus of 5 550 kg·hm^-2. In addition, the total rainfall erosive factor and the total peak flow amount were proved to be the main influential factors of the variation of the sediment transport modulus for watersheds with various landscape structures and farmland-dominated landscapes, and woodland - dominated watersheds, respectively.