Daily rainfall data provided by the National Meteorological Information Centre of China (http://cdc.cma.gov.cn/) from 133 meteorological stations were used to analyze the spatiotemporal variation of rainfall erosivity on the Loess Plateau during the period 2000–2010. Of these stations, 72 were on the Loess Plateau and the remaining 61 were located adjacent to the Plateau.
The rainfall erosivity was calculated by the available rainfall data points. These values were then better fitted and interpolated to continuous surfaces with a 1 km × 1 km spatial resolution
using the ANUSPLIN software package with partial thin plate smoothing splines, an approach that has been developed and tested over several years and is now widely used (Hutchinson, 1992).