Preparation of suitable silicon (111) wafers in weakly alkaline HF solutions results in the formation of atomically flat, hydrogen-terminated surfaces. Under high-vacuum conditions, the scanning tunneling microscope has been employed to selectively desorb the passivating hydrogen from nanometer-sized surface regions. The hydrogen depassivation process is studied as a function of current and applied bias voltage, voltage polarity, and exposure time to incident electrons either on individual surface locations or by varying the speed of tip motion to control the electron dose, The experimental findings are interpreted in terms of two distinct desorption mechanisms and the respective desorption yields ate specified.