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The difficulties involved in calibration of physically based erosion models have been partly attributable to the lack of robust optimization tools. This paper presents the essential concepts and application to optimize channel and plane parameters in an erosion model, with a global optimization method known as the SCE-UA (Duan et al., 1992. Water Resources Research 28(4): 1015-1031), which has recently shown promise as an effective and efficient optimization method for calibrating watershed models. It is based on the simplex method, and in order to improve its efficiency by making the simplex expand in a direction of more favourable conditions, or contract if a move was taken in a direction of less favourable conditions, new evolution steps have been introduced. The physically based erosion model that was chosen is called WESP (watershed erosion simulation program), developed by Lopes and Lane (1988. In Sediment Budgets, Bordas MP, Walling DE (eds). IAHS Publication no. 174. IAHS: Wallingford). The optimization technique was tested with the field data collected in an experimental watershed located in a semi-arid region of Brazil. On the basis of these results, the recommended erosion parameter values for a semi-arid region are given, which could serve as an initial estimate for other similar areas. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.