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Due to relatively strong human activities in the hilly area of Loess Plateau, the natural vegetation has been destroyed, and landscapepattern based on agricultural land matrix was land use mosaic composing of shrub land, grassland, woodland and orchard.This pattern has animportant effect on soil moisture and soil nutrients.The Danangou catchment, a typical small catchment, was selected to study the effects ofland use and its patterns on soil moisture and nutrients in this paper.The results are as follows: The comparisons of soil moisture among sevenland uses for wet year and dry year were performed: (1) the average of soil moisture content for whole catchment was 12.11% in wet year,while it was 9.37% in dry year; (2) soil moisture among seven land uses was significantly different in dry year, but not in wet year; (3) fromwet year to dry year, the profile type of soil moisture changed from decreasing type to fluctuation-type and from fluctuant type to increasingtype; (4) the increasing trend in soil moisture from the top to foot of hillslope occurred in simple land use along slope, while complicateddistribution of soil moisture was observed in multiple land uses along slope.The relationships between soil nutrients and land uses and landscapepositions were analysed: ( 1 ) five nutrient contents of soil organic matter (SOM), total N (TN), available N (AN), total P (TP) andavailable P (AP) in hilly area were lower than that in other areas.SOM content was less than 1%, TN content less than 0.07%, and TPcontent between 0.05% and 0.06%; (2) SOM and TN contents in woodland, shrub land and grassland were significantly higher than that infallow land and cropland, and higher level in soil fertility was found in crop-fruit intercropping land among croplands; (3) soil nutrientdistribution and responses to landscape positions were variable depending on slope and the location of land use types.
