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The mineral components of soil are sand, silt and clay, and their relative proportions determine a soil's texture. Properties that are influenced by soil texture include porosity, permeability, infiltration, shrink-swell rate, water-holding capacity, and susceptibility to erosion. In the illustrated USDA textural classification triangle, the ...
Photograph taken 21 March 2010 in Norwich, Vermont. Frost heaving (or a frost heave) is an upwards swelling of soil during freezing conditions caused by an increasing presence of ice as it grows towards the surface, upwards from the depth in the soil where freezing temperatures have penetrated into the soil (the freezing front or freezing boundary).
Lenticular —The units are overlapping lenses parallel to the soil surface. They are thickest in the middle and thin towards the edges. Lenticular structure is commonly associated with moist soils, texture classes high in silt or very fine sand (e.g., silt loam), and high potential for frost action. [5]
For example, if a soil is 70 percent sand and 10 percent clay then the soil is classified as a sandy loam. The same method can be used starting on any side of the soil triangle. If the texture by feel method was used to determine the soil type, the triangle can also provide a rough estimate on the percentages of sand, silt, and clay in the soil ...
Soil biological processes are most important in soils that do not have 2:1 phyllosilicate clay minerals, and are therefore lacking in shrinking and swelling properties that can aid in structural formation. [12] Soil organisms can have an indirect and direct effects on soil structure at different levels of aggregate formation.
The properties of the soil itself are a dominant control on the ability of polymers to interact with it. A study of the cationic, alkaline polymer SS299 (a commercially produced additive) found that the properties of treated soils depend on the plasticity index of the original soil, which reflects its clay content. [5]
Soil types by clay, silt and sand composition as used by the United States Department of Agriculture. Loam (in geology and soil science) is soil composed mostly of sand (particle size > 63 micrometres (0.0025 in)), silt (particle size > 2 micrometres (7.9 × 10 −5 in)), and a smaller amount of clay (particle size < 2 micrometres (7.9 × 10 −5 in)).
The thickness of the zone of capillary saturation depends on the pore size, but typically, the heights vary between a centimeter or so for coarse sand to tens of meters for a silt or clay. [3] In fact the pore space of soil is a uniform fractal e.g. a set of uniformly distributed D-dimensional fractals of average linear size L. For the clay ...