Extraction of three-dimensional soil pore space from microtomography images using a geometrical approach

Aggregate hierarchy and carbon mineralization in two Oxisols of New South Wales, Australia

“…Lehmann et al (2006) demonstrated an increase in pore volume at a resolution of 3.5 mm compared with 60 mm. However, Peth et al (2008) and Ngom et al (2011) acquired images of soil aggregates from conventional and grassland soils at 3.2 mm and 5.4 mm, respectively by synchrotron mCT to maximize resolution. Given the size difference between macro-and micro-aggregates we scanned micro-aggregates at higher resolution than macro-aggregates to capture the detail of pore geometry in the micro-aggregates.…”

Estimating hydraulic conductivities of the soil aggregates and their clay-organic coatings using numerical inversion of capillary rise data

“…The thicker clay coatings or transitional regions however, were not observed on the aggregates from the Bt2 horizon using the micromorphological images. Perhaps other imaging techniques like microtomography (Peth et al, 2008 andNgom et al, 2011) would be suitable to study these phenomena. However, assumption of the large coatings thickness would not improve solution in the case of the second set of aggregates taken in 2009, for which overlapping curves for aggregates without and with coatings were obtained.…”

Bacterial predator–prey dynamics in microscale patchy landscapes

“…Soil typically contains particles with sizes that vary between 2 mm or less for clay and 1 mm for sand [3,4] (figure 1a). It is within the confines of the interconnected cavities in between soil particles that microorganisms, such as bacteria, interact.…”