Purpose <p>During the last 5 decades, the occurrence of extreme rainfall events in some areas of Southern Italy has increased. These events, associated with inappropriate land management (deforestation, absence of anti-erosive countermeasures, increase of burned areas due to high anthropic impact) generated high values of soil erosion and increased the risk of land degradation in these areas. Recent studies carried out in Calabria (Southern Italy) demonstrated that a significant proportion of the annual sediment yield observed in experimental catchments is due to the extreme events occurred each year which produced more than 50% of the total annual sediment yield with a very few exceptions. These findings emphasize the importance of extreme events on soil erosion and make it necessary to suggest a robust tool to quantify the magnitude of these erosion rates.</p> Materials and methods <p>Field measurements of ⁷Be were undertaken over an experimental catchment in Calabria in order to check the hydrological response of the catchment following severe rainfall events occurred in this area during the last 6 years. Three events of high magnitude were selected and for each of which rainfall, runoff, and sediment yield measurements were obtained. The soil sampling for ⁷Be measurements followed a transects scheme and it allowed obtaining 22 estimates of soil re-distribution rates for each event.</p> Results and discussion <p>The estimates of net soil erosion rates derived from the ⁷Be measurements reflected, first, a different rate of soil erosion related to the location of the three selected transects. In this respect, Transect no. 2, that follows the main drainage line of the catchment, provided the highest rate of soil loss (ranging from 15.7 to 69.7 t ha^− 1), while Transect no. 3 proved to be the most conservative (with soil loss estimates ranging from 0.7 to 37.3 t ha^− 1). The second, important, result suggested that the overall estimates of net erosion rates compared well with the direct observations of sediment yield obtained by the monitoring station at the catchment outlet.</p> Conclusions <p>The results obtained in this work indicate that the ⁷Be technique is able to provide robust estimates of soil erosion rates in the area if the point by point estimates are combined to produce a sediment yield estimate at the catchment outlet. The good performance of the technique suggests that it may be used as an important tool to adopt soil conservation strategies for reducing costs of on-site and off-site impacts in areas at risk.</p>