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In arid climate regions, redistribution of runoff water is highly relevant for vegetation development. The process of water redistribution at catchment scale is studied with the landscape process model LAPSUS, mainly used for erosion and sedimentation modelling. LAPSUS, formerly applied in Mediterranean climates, is modified to deal with the arid climate of the Negev Desert of Israel. Daily event based model runs were used instead of yearly model runs, and the infiltration module was modified to better represent the spatial diversity in water availability in an arid catchment. The model is calibrated for two small catchments in the Negev Desert of Israel, Halluqim and Avdat. First, a sensitivity analysis of the modified LAPSUS is performed. Pore volume appears to have an especially strong influence on the modelling results. Second, the capability of LAPSUS to deal with varying surface characteristics is assessed by comparing the water redistribution patterns in the two catchments with field data. Simulation results demonstrate that the catchments respond very differently to precipitation. Water redistribution is larger in the dominantly bedrock covered Halluqim compared to the dominantly loess covered catchment of Avdat. Consequently, Halluqim has more positions with water accumulation than Avdat, and can sustain a larger vegetation cover, including Mediterranean species. Finally, the modelled infiltration patterns are compared with vegetation cover in the catchments. The results indicate that there is a broad agreement between infiltration and vegetation patterns, but locally there is a strong mismatch, indicating that some of the involved processes are still missing from the model.

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This study compares three landscape evolution models and their ability to correctly simulate measured 2500 year landscape evolution in two small catchments in the Belgian loess belt. WATEM LT and LAPSUS both model tillage and water erosion and deposition and have detachment-limited descriptions for water erosion and deposition. Equations in LAPSUS are more mechanistic than those in WATEM LT. WATEM LTT resembles WATEM LT, but is a transport-limited model. All three models are DEMbased. Calibration and validation simulations were performed forward in time on (1D) transects for four spatial resolutions, and backward in time for (2D) catchments at 20 m resolution. For transects, model outputs were compared with discretized observations of transect shape. For catchments, outputs were compared with point observations of palaeo-altitude, averaged over landscape element classes. For transects, the three models performed well, resulting in model efficiency factors of 0.92 to 0.99 for calibration and 0.62 to 0.96 for validation. However, for catchments, simulations showed that the transport-limited WATEM LTT model could not realistically simulate long-term landscape evolution. Performance of WATEM LT and LAPSUS at catchment scale was similar to that on transects, although LAPSUS has problems with backward calculation. Tests demonstrate that a transport-limited approach cannot be used to model long-term landscape evolution in the Belgian loess belt, which is in agreement with theoretical and empirical understanding of soil erosion processes in this environment. The difference in performance between transport-limited and detachment-limited models is clear only when the models are evaluated in a 2D catchment. The lack of such distinction when models were applied in a 1D transect highlights the importance of evaluating landscape evolution models in a 2D setting so that effects of flow convergence/divergence can be accounted for.

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