This paper focuses on the effects of precipitation and vegetation coverage on runoff and sediment yield in the Jinsha River Basin. Results of regression analysis were taken as input variables to investigate the applicability of the adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) to simulating annual runoff and sediment yield. Correlation analysis indicates that runoff and sediment yield are positively correlated with the precipitation indices, while negatively correlated with the vegetation indices. Furthermore, the results of stepwise regression show that annual precipitation is the most important factor influencing the variation of runoff, followed by forest coverage, and their contributions to the variation of runoff are 69.8% and 17.3%, respectively. For sediment yield, rainfall erosivity is the most important factor, followed by forest coverage, and their contributions to the variation of sediment yield are 49.3% and 24.2%, respectively. The ANFIS model is of high precision in runoff forecasting, with a relative error of less than 5%, but of poor precision in sediment yield forecasting, indicating that precipitation and vegetation coverage can explain only part of the variation of sediment yield, and that other impact factors, such as human activities, should be sufficiently considered as well.
