effect of compaction on physical and micromorphological properties of forest soils压实对身体的影响和微形森林土壤的性质.pdfVIP

American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2012, 3, 159-163 159 /10.4236/ajps.2012.31018 Published Online January 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ajps) Effect of Compaction on Physical and Micromorphological Properties of Forest Soils 1 2 2 3 Iraj Bagheri , Samira Bahram Kalhori , Mehdi Akef , Farhad Khormali 1Department of Agricultural Mechanization Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran; 2De- partment of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture Sciences, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran; 3Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran. Email: irajbagheri@guilan.ac.ir Received August 15th, 2011; revised September 20th, 2011; accepted October 9th, 2011 ABSTRACT The objective of this research was to assess the effect of skidding machinery on soil physical and micromorphological properties. The different positions (control or non-traffic areas, left wheel track, right wheel track and log track) and two soil depths (0 - 10 and 10 - 20 cm) in three repetitions were investigated. The results showed that average soil dry bulk density in four positions and two soil depths were significantly different. Comparison of average total porosity percent- age and soil saturated hydraulic conductivity revealed that there were significant differences in four positions and two soil depths. Soil thin section studies using Image Tool software showed that in compacted samples there was an in- crease in the number of vughs voids and channels voids were in low occurrence. Micromorphological studies showed that soil compaction caused void size to decrease. In compacted samples voids bigger than 10 μm were very rare and dominant voids size was 2 μm. In compacted samples