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Scaling of Soil Physical Properties

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Agrophysics

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Definition

Soil spatial variability. Soil properties measured at different locations exhibit different values.

Self similarity. Soil properties measured at points close to each other are more similar than those located far apart.

Scale. It is a characteristic length or time.

Scale dependency. The statistical measure of soil properties change with change in scale.

Scale invariance. A measure of a soil property at a scale is a power function of the scale with the exponent independent of scale.

Introduction

Soil physical properties are highly variable and exhibit scale-dependent spatial variability (Nielsen et al., 1973; Burrough, 1983). For environmental, hydrological, and agricultural applications, some questions are always being asked about soil physical properties: What is the most representative scale of variability and at which scale should we measure the soil physical properties? How does the variability change with scales? How can we interpret and correlate soil processes over...

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Correspondence to Asim Biswas .

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Biswas, A., Si, B.C. (2011). Scaling of Soil Physical Properties. In: Gliński, J., Horabik, J., Lipiec, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Agrophysics. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3585-1_243

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