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1. Physical properties – Texture Texture
2. Soil Texture Proportions of sand, silt, and clay
Not OM – nonetheless important
Not coarse fragments – nonetheless important Cons: Don’t add pore space, get in the way (plant roots, for example)
Pros: Mineral soil source, rocky soils can allow deep percolation ?water source for deep rooted plantsCons: Don’t add pore space, get in the way (plant roots, for example)
Pros: Mineral soil source, rocky soils can allow deep percolation ?water source for deep rooted plants
3. Relative Size Comparison of Soil Particles
5. Texture Surface area per unit volume
1 g sand ~ 0.1 m2
1 g silt ~ 1 m2
1 g clay ~ 10-1000 m2
6. Teton Dam failure story: used silt instead of clay as dam’s core, and it failed, killing 11 people and wiping out thousands of homes.Teton Dam failure story: used silt instead of clay as dam’s core, and it failed, killing 11 people and wiping out thousands of homes.
8. Influence of Texture
9. Physical properties Density
Porosity
10. But soil properties greatly influenced by –
Pore size range ? Particle heterogeneity
& Aggregation
Finer pores – water unavailable, poor aeration, little waterflow,
Finest pores – too small for microbes
Pore network ? Aggregation
11.
Aggregation influenced by
Coarse scale – biotic:
Roots, Burrowing animals (mammals, earthworms)
Sticky networks: root hairs, fungi
Fine scale – physical/chemical:
Clay properties: Flocculation, bridging (multivalent cations)
Clay/humus/cation complexes
Cementing: Iron oxides (Ultisols & Oxisols)
Volume changes in clays: shrink/swelling, freeze drying