Abstract: In order to establish the suitable soil erosion model for the loess hilly region of Loess Plateau, one typical catchment is selected, and a lot of experiments are carried out in this catchment. Soil surface properties are the basic input information and have very significance for establishing soil erosion model at catchment level. The spatial and temporal variability of soil surface properties of different land use system were analyzed by means of roughness meter, micro cohesion meter, and constant pressure head method. The results indicate that the random roughness (RR) change very largely due to the effect of tillage, fertilizing, plant, harvest and so on. The RR of farmland is the highest among 5 kinds of land use and is 1.05, 2.10, 1.70, 1.95 times to orchard, woodland, shrub and wasteland respectively. The soil cohesion of wasteland and shrub varied very sharply and had no significant change in woodland, farmland, and orchard. Wasteland had the highest cohesion and then is shrub, woodland, orchard and farmland, and the measured data are 0.222, 0.144, 0.097, 0.084, and 0.068 kg/cm². Organic matter content is the main factor, which influence soil aggregated stability. The organic content is different in different land use and due to its impact, the variability of aggregated stability changed widely. From high to low, the turn was woodland, shrub, orchard, farmland and wasteland respectively. The average measured data were 6.38, 4.01, 3.64, 3.62 and 3.06. The measured results indicated that because the farmland had low soil cohesion and aggregated stability, the serious soil erosion is very easy happening when heavy storm takes place. Therefore, more attention should be paid to farmland for soil conservation purpose. Meanwhile, the wasteland also has low aggregated stability, when runoff covers waste ground, the soil is very easy to be disposed. So a great of attention need be paid to the wasteland at the same time when soil and water comprehensive control measure is designed.