Abstract
The technique of numerical analysis of three-dimensional tomographic images of the pore space of soil objects has been used in this paper. It applies methods of integral geometry, topology and morphological analysis. To characterize quantitatively the transformation of the pore space structure, tomographic images of four undisturbed soils were analyzed, i.e., heavy loamy agro-gray soil (Retic Phaeozem), agromineral (Sapric Rheic Mineralic Histosols), and hypnum (brown moss Sapric Rheic Histosols) peat soils in dry and wet conditions. For samples of the subplow horizon in agro-gray soil, a decrease in both Betty numbers was observed on wetting, where the zero number (b0) stands for the amount of topologically simple closed pores, and the first number (b1) indicates a decrease in pore connectivity, which varies in a narrower range of pore sizes as compared to b0. When a sample of agromineral peat soil is moistened, the Euler–Poincaré characteristic is negative in the pore range of 0.1–0.16 mm, which points to the predominating complicated branched structure of the pore space and high pore connectivity. When hypnum moss is saturated, a lot of tunnel pores get narrower (“collapse”), and the connectivity decreases due to the structural specifics of long-stemmed plant residues. The number of pores and connections between them in peat soils is an order of magnitude higher than those in the subplow horizon A of the agro-gray soil. The provided quantitative changes in the considered parameters of tomographic images of the soil pore space confirm the possibility of applying them for estimating the transformation of the pore space in soils.
Highlights
Soil porosity is a three-dimensional structure with a complicated geometry of the internal surface
This work considers tools based on fundamental basis, i.e., statistical physics, integral geometry and topology
To assess the applicability of integral geometry, we have studied the soils contrasting in their origin, composition, and hydrophysical properties, i.e., agro-gray soil (Retic Phaeozem) and peat soil (Sapric Rheic Histosol)
Summary
Soil porosity is a three-dimensional structure with a complicated geometry of the internal surface. We have applied the methodology of analyzing the internal geometry of pore space in various soil samples in dry and close to water saturation conditions in order to describe quantitatively the changes that go in soils [5, 7]. Pore space is taken as the object of research, since its structure largely determines the soil properties [2, 4, 20] In this case, the Minkowski functionals with an accuracy to a factor correspond to the pore volume (M0), the pore surface area (M1), and the (a). Due to these operations, we can calculate the functionals for pores of various diameters. Deriving such distributions of functionals for the pore space of samples in dry and wet conditions will allow us to describe quantitatively the transformations in the pore space structure in the course of soil saturation with moisture
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