Fractal Geometry and Geostatistics for describing the Field Variability of Soil Aggregation
✍ Scribed by A. Castrignanò; M. Stelluti
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 184 KB
- Volume
- 73
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0021-8634
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✦ Synopsis
Fractal geometry has become a widely accepted descriptive tool for speci"c physical properties of natural soils and fractal scaling has recently been proposed as a model for soil particle size distribution. In this work, the cumulative mass distribution of dry soil aggregates, M(r(R), was estimated and shown to be proportional to R -", where r is the aggregate size, R is a speci"c measuring scale and D is the fractal dimension, which is a measure of soil fragmentation: the larger its value, the greater the fragmentation.
Aggregates were collected from a depth of up to 40 cm of a clay soil located at Metaponto (South Italy). The "eld of 23;25 m was sampled in 81 sites at the nodes of a semi-regular grid and aggregate size distribution was obtained by dry sieving the soil through a nest of sieves (sized 10, 5, 2, 1 and 0)5 mm). The estimated D values were found to vary from 2 to 3 and were then interpolated by using the geostatistical procedure called ordinary kriging. The results were shown in the form of grey-coloured maps, which could be used as a useful tool for describing "eld variability in soil aggregation.