In Tunisia, soil and water conservation interventions are among the most practicable strategies to prevent and mitigate rainwater losses through surface runoff and consequential erosion of fertile soils. In this study, a small and terraced agricultural catchment (Sbaihia) was used as an experimental site to analyze and parameterize the effects of bench terraces on water and sediment yield using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool. Model calibration and validation was performed, taking advantage from high‐quality daily runoff data from 1994 to 2000 and a high‐resolution bathymetric survey of the hill lake at the watershed outlet. Soil and Water Assessment Tool indicated that the local terraces, established on approximately 50% of the watershed area, reduced surface runoff by around 19% and sediment yield by around 22%, decelerating the siltation of the hill lake. Targeted model calibration delivered concise parameter set describing bench terrace impacts on runoff (Soil Conservation Service curve number method) and sediment yield (Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation) crucial for outscaling of soil and water conservation impacts and suitable watershed management. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Groundwater is the main source of water in the studied area; therefore, it is significantly requested in all the activities of the inhabitants. These natural resources are affected by some drivers especially Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) and Climate Change. A Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) dynamics study is crucial for any global environmental change evaluation. For instance, for a given place, its change could affect considerably water cycle components. Therefore, the knowledge of the effects of LULC on groundwater recharge is then the key in water resources management system, in particular for the decision makers of the Koda Catchment where the scarcity of the water availability for agriculture is real. The spatiotemporal variation of the different units of LULC present in the catchment has been examined in this study. The Envi 4.5 Software coupled with ArcGIS using the Supervised Classification method, was applied to subset Landsat images from 1990 to 2016. Five (5) major LULC categories, cultivated land, bare land, herbaceous savannah, shrubby savannah and degraded savannah, were identified in the catchment. In a parallel direction, the groundwater recharge has been estimated through the conceptual Gardenia model for the same period 1990-2016. The results showed that the portion of cultivated land and bare land increased (14.9% and 23.5% respectively) while, the portion of savannah decreased: herbaceous savannah by 24.4%, degraded savannah by 10.32% and Shrubby Savannah by 3.6%.