Erodibility of model soils with different densities

Abstract

Soil erodibility as a function of the soil density was studied in a hydraulic flume. The experiments were performed with mixtures of aggregates and different-sized chernozemic soil particles with the predominance of the fraction of 0.5–2 mm, which corresponded to their proportions in the plow horizon. It was found that, when the soil density increased, the erodibility abruptly decreased and was well described by a power function with an exponent of −9.25 (R 2 = 0.997). The approximate calculation of the contact area between the aggregates showed that the cohesion force between them is not a linear function of the total area of the interaggregate contacts.