Assessment of the usefulness of particle size distribution measured by laser diffraction for soil water retention modelling

Abstract

Particle size distribution (PSD) is a major soil characteristic, which is essential and commonly used for the development of pedotransfer functions (PTFs) to estimate the water retention of soils. The laser diffraction method (LDM) became a popular alternative to the standard sieve-hydrometer method (SHM) of PSD measurement. Unfortunately, PSDs determined with LDM and SHM methods differ sometimes substantially. Moreover, it is claimed that the laser diffraction method underestimates finer fractions in favor of coarser fractions. Several authors have tried to elaborate on methods to recalculate LDM PSD into its SHM counterparts, but no universal methodology has been developed to this date. In this paper, we use PSD determined by LDM directly for PTF development and compare it with the classical PTF approach based on PSD measured by SHM. Four different PTF models based on LDM particle size distribution data were developed, with different PSD characteristics taken as the models' input variables. The possibility of using alternative PSD characteristics, such as deciles, area moment mean and volume moment mean, for PTF development was examined. The accuracy of PTF models constructed on the basis of LDM-measured PSD was comparable with that of the developed models using texture data obtained from SHM, giving approximately the same RMSE and R 2 values. Our study shows that LDM-measured particle size distribution may be directly used for PTF developments without any recalculations to their sieve-hydrometer counterparts.

Why do they keep rejecting my manuscript — do’s and don’ts and new horizons in pedotransfer studies

“…This is confirmed in practice, as new PTF-related studies have been abundantly published since 2012 (the year of the survey), be those developments in methodology, new variables used to develop PTFs, or other new aspects. Some such examples include, but are not limited to those by HAGHVERDI et al (2012), introducing a new approach; TÓTH et al (2012), introducing a new method and working with a specific group of soils; LAMORSKI et al (2014), introducing a new data source for a known soil property; TÓTH et al (2014), introducing a "customer-first" approach to develop new PTFs for Europe; BABAEIAN et al (2015), introducing a new data type; and GHANBARIAN et al (2015), introducing a new method and examining a scale issue. The respondents were also asked to provide their view on what subjects are over-or under-represented in current PTF studies and what new aspects they would recommend for study.…”

Talajminták lézeres szemcseanalízisének módszertani tapasztalatai

“…MCCAVE et al, 1986;CHAPPELL, 1998;BITTELLI et al, 1999;BIEGANOWSKI et al, 2010;RYŻAK & BIEGANOWSKI, 2011;MAKÓ et al, 2014;LAMORSKI et al, 2014;JOÓ et al, 2015;THOMAS & REDSTEER, 2016). Ezek közül is legtöbbször a Mastersizer 2000 rendszereket alkalmazták.…”

“…LOIZEAU et al, 1994;KONERT &VANDENBERGHE, 1997;MUGGLER et al, 1997;BEUSELINCK et al, 1998;BUURMAN et al, 2001;VANDECASTEELE & DE VOS, 2001;XU & DI GUIDA, 2003;ESHELet al, 2004;ARRIAGA et al, 2006;HERNÁDI et al, 2008;TAUBNER et al, 2009;KUN et al, 2013;YANG et al, 2015;MAKÓ et al, 2016a;b;FISHER et al, 2017), vagy a hidrométeres mérések és a LDM mérések eredményeit (pl. RYŻAK et al, 2004;FERRO & MIRABLE, 2009;SEGAL et al, 2009;LAMORSKI et al, 2014;FENTON et al, 2015) hasonlítja össze. A szerzők általában egyetértenek abban, hogy a LDM többé-kevésbé kisebb mennyiségű agyagtartalmat és nagyobb arányú portartalmat mér, mint az ülepítéses módszerek.…”

Easily degradable carbon – an indicator of microbial hotspots and soil degradation

“…(Bieganowski et al, 2013). The soils were dispersed using ultrasound at 35 W for 4 min without removing the organic matter (Lamorski et al, 2014). The measurements were carried out in 3 replications.…”