Relationship between soil aggregate strength, shape and porosity for soils under different long-term management

• Rotation and tillage effect on aggregate and bulk soil properties
• Soil aggregate properties determined using X-ray CT imagery
• Rotation affected soil aggregate properties more than tillage.
• Be careful when predicting strength from general aggregate characteristics
• Strong correlation between aggregate properties and bulk soil fragmentation

Soil aggregate properties, such as strength, shape and porosity, influence a range of essential soil functions and there is a need for more detailed understanding of the effect of soil management on these aggregate properties. There is also a need for improved knowledge on the link between aggregate and bulk soil properties. The objectives of this study were to quantify the long-term effect of rotation and tillage on aggregate shape, strength and pore characteristics, to evaluate the influence of aggregate shape and pore characteristics on aggregate strength and soil friability and to correlate aggregate properties to bulk soil properties. Soil core samples were taken in spring 2010 from the long-term rotation and tillage trial (initiated in 1980) at the University of Guelph, Canada. The rotations included were continuous corn (R1) and a diverse rotation (R6), and the tillage treatments were mouldboard ploughing (MP) and no-tillage (NT). The soil cores were exposed to a drop shatter test and air-dried before separation into different size fractions. Ten aggregates from the 4–9.2 mm size fraction per core sample (i.e. 320 in all) were X-ray micro-CT scanned. The size, shape and porosity of the aggregates were determined using image analysis with 40 μm voxel size. Subsequently, aggregate tensile strength was determined in an indirect tension test. Rotation had a more pronounced effect than tillage treatment on the different aggregate properties. The diverse rotation resulted in higher aggregate total porosity and more rounded aggregates than the continuous corn rotation. Surprisingly, there was no treatment effect on X-ray micro-CT resolvable porosities. Aggregate strength decreased with both total and X-ray micro-CT resolvable porosity even though the correlations were weak. Significant correlation was also found to aggregate sphericity although only around 10% of the variation in tensile strength could be explained by this property. Our study highlights that caution must be taken when trying to predict aggregate strength from general aggregate characteristics. For both bulk soil and aggregates, the R6-MP had highest and R1-NT lowest porosity. Tillage had strongest effect on bulk soil porosity, whereas aggregate total porosity was only affected by rotation. Our results suggest that the scale of observation is important when evaluating the influence of soil management. A strong correlation was found between aggregate strength and pore characteristics and soil fragmentation in a drop shatter test, i.e. 55% of the variation could be explained. Our study indicates therefore that bulk soil fragmentation behaviour can be predicted from aggregate characteristics. It needs to be highlighted that our results are based on one long-term experiment on a silt loam soil. The results need to be verified for soils with different soil types, climates and management histories.