Estimating soil stress distribution by using depth‐dependent soil bulk‐density data

Abstract

AbstractDepth‐dependent soil bulk density (BDS) is usually affected by soil‐specific factors like texture, structure, clay mineralogy, soil organic‐matter content, soil moisture content, and composition of soil solution and is also affected by external factors like overburden‐stress history or hydrological fluxes. Generally, the depth‐dependent BDS cannot be predicted or extrapolated precisely from a limited number of sampling depths. In the present paper, an easy method is proposed to estimate the state of soil mechanical stress by analyzing the packing characteristics of the profile using soil bulk‐density data. Results for homogeneous loess profiles exposed to the site‐specific climatic conditions show that the depth‐dependent relation of void ratio vs. weight of overburden soil can be described systematically so that deviations from the noncompacted reference state can be detected. We observed that precompaction increased from forest soils (reference) to agricultural soils with decreasing depth.