Soil pore structure and its research methods: A review

Nannan Wang and Tibin Zhang
Additional contact information
Nannan Wang: Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas, Ministry of Education, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, P.R. China
Tibin Zhang: Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas, Ministry of Education, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, P.R. China

Soil and Water Research, 2024, vol. 19, issue 1, 1-24

Abstract: Soil pore is an important part of soil structure. According to the causes of formation, soil pores can be divided into biological pores formed by animal movement and plant root development and non-biological pores formed by dry-wet and freeze-thaw alternation or artificial tillage. The soil pore structure affects the migration of water, gas, nutrients and so on in the soil, especially the macropores can also produce water or solute preferential migration. Studying soil pores is of great significance for predicting soil hydraulic properties, reducing groundwater pollution and soil nutrient loss. Based on previous studies on soil pore structure, this paper systematically summarized the role of soil pores, influencing factors and the advantages and disadvantages of various research methods. This paper not only introduces traditional methods (including direct and indirect methods), but also summarizes the new research on soil pores combined with computed tomography (CT) technology and other science and technology in recent years. Finally, the prospect and development trend of soil pore research in the future were predicted, so as to provide reference for further research on soil pore structure.

Keywords: image analysis; influencing factors; network model; soil structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://swr.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/64/2023-SWR.html (text/html)
http://swr.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/64/2023-SWR.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlswr:v:19:y:2024:i:1:id:64-2023-swr

DOI: 10.17221/64/2023-SWR

Access Statistics for this article

Soil and Water Research is currently edited by Ing. Markéta Knížková, (Executive Editor)

More articles in Soil and Water Research from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().