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Abstract The Blue Nile basin is one of the hot‐spots of soil erosion areas in Ethiopia. However, the impact of land use changes on soil erosion is poorly understood in the Tagaw watershed. Hence, the objective of the study is to assess the impact of land use changes on soil erosion in Tagaw watershed over the last 31 years. Rainfall, soil, satellite images and topographic data are acquired from field survey and secondary sources. A Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model is used to estimate soil erosion. The mean annual and total potential soil losses of the watershed are 19.3, 22.9, 26 and 0.06–503.56, 0.11–516.67, and 0.00–543.5 tons ha−1 yr−1 for 1995, 2006 and 2016 respectively. The highest soil loss is found for bare land. The RUSLE model further showed that the highest soil erosion occurred in 2016 whereas the lowest soil erosion occurred in 1995.