Soil erosion is often regarded as one of the main processes of desertification. This has led to the use of various desertification indicators that are related to soil erosion. Most of these indicators focus, however, on small spatial units, while little attention has been given to the amount of sediment exported at the catchment scale. Such a small spatial unit approach neglects the transfer of sediment through catchments as well as the scale-dependency of erosion processes. Furthermore, this approach does not consider important off-site impacts of soil erosion, such as sediment deposition in reservoirs, flooding as well as ecological impacts.