The identification of effective root zone would clarify dynamics of plant available water and soil water balance. Using the relationship between soil properties and electrical resistivity (ER) the purpose of this research is to identify soil zone affected by a plant root activity using electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) technique. Four plastic containers were prepared for two different soil textures (clay and sandy loam) and one container for each texture was selected for planting four corn seedlings (Zea mays L.) and the others were prepared for the blank. For ERT monitoring, we prepared 0.8 m plastic sticks with 17 electrodes installed with 5 cm space. The Ministing (AGI Inc., Texas) instrument for electrical resistivity measurement and semi-auto converter of electrode arrangement were set up for dipole-dipole array. During 2 months of the corns growing, ERT monitoring was made 3 to 4 days after the irrigation practice. Despite of the same amount water supplied into soils, two textures showed very different apparent resistivity values due to different clay content. The apparent electrical resistivity is consistently lower in clay loam comparing to sandy loam soil implying that plant root does not significantly alter the overall trend of resistivity. When plant root system, however, is active both soils with plants showed 2-7 times higher electrical resistivity and higher coefficient variation than soils without plant, implying the effect of root system on the resistivity, in which may caused by . This result suggests plant root activities regulating the soil water dynamics mainly control the variation of electrical resistivity over soil textural difference. Therefore the identification of water uptake zone would highly be correlated to plant root activities, thus ERT will be feasible approach to identify spatial characteristics of a plant root activity.
Human influence on soil formation has dramatically increased as the development of human civilization and industry. Increase of anthropogenic soils induced research of those soils; classification, chemical and physical characteristics and plant growth of anthropogenic soils. However there have been no reports on soil pore properties from the anthropogenic soils so far. Therefore the objectives of this study were to test computer tomography (CT) to characterize physical properties of an anthropogenic paddy field soil and to find differences between natural and anthropogenic paddy field soils. Soil samples of a natural paddy field were taken from Ansung, Gyeonggi-do (Ansung site), and samples of an anthropogenic paddy field were from Gumi in Gyeongsangnam-do (Gasan) where paddy fields were remodeled in 2011-2012. Samples were taken at three different depths and analyzed for routine physical properties and CT scans. CT scan provided 3 dimensional images to calculate pore size, length and tortuosity of soil pores. Fractal analysis was applied to quantify pore structure within soil images. The results of measured physical properties (bulk density, porosity) did not show differences across depths and sites, but hardness and water content had differences. These differences repeated within the results of pore morphology. Top soil samples from both sites had greater pore numbers and sizes than others. Fractal analyses showed that top soils had more heterogeneous pore structures than others. The bottom layer of the Gasan site showed more degradation of pore properties than ploughpan and bottom layers from the Ansung site. These results concluded that anthropogenic soils may have more degraded pore properties as depth increases. The remodeled paddy fields may need more fundamental remediation to improve physical conditions. This study suggests that pore analyses using CT can provide important information of physical conditions from anthropogenic soils.
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