Wind erosion has intensified across arid and semi-arid regions and increasingly threatens soil sustainability on sloping farmland, particularly where surface soils are repeatedly disturbed by tillage practices and other agricultural activities. Physical soil crusts can effectively mitigate wind erosion; however, quantitative understanding of how crust stability responds to tillage-induced surface disturbance across different slope gradients and positions remains limited. This knowledge gap is especially evident across the northern Loess Plateau. Long-term grazing and frequent mechanical disturbance have severely degraded surface crusts, making the region an ideal site to examine how tillage-induced soil structure disruption amplifies wind erosion processes. In the Liudaogou watershed on the northern Loess Plateau, runoff plots were deployed on slopes of 0 degrees, 5 degrees, 10 degrees, 15 degrees, 20 degrees, and 25 degrees. Winter-spring wind erosion was monitored for two years using the Be-7 tracer technique. Artificial surface disturbance was applied to simulate tillage-induced soil disturbance and surface leveling. Results showed that winter-spring wind erosion significantly reduced the shear strength and hardness of physical soil crusts (p < 0.001), while leveled surfaces exhibited higher crust strength than undisturbed surfaces (p < 0.001). Shear strength was the primary factor governing the relationship between tillage-induced disturbance and wind erosion response. Be-7 activity in disturbed plots was consistently lower than that under natural conditions and displayed a non-linear response to slope gradient, with pronounced activity centers on gentler slopes. Average wind erosion intensity ranged from 8.38 to 11.20 kg m(-2) under disturbed conditions, while erosion under natural surfaces accounted for 40.10-109.31% of these values. Wind erosion hotspots were primarily occurred at downwind positions on gentle slopes and the upwind positions of steeper slopes. These findings demonstrate that tillage-induced surface disturbance alters soil crust stability and redistributes wind erosion risk along slopes. This study provides a process-based framework to identify erosion-prone areas and optimize surface management strategies for sloping dryland farmland.