Contact angle of soils as affected by depth, texture, and land management

authored by: S. K. Woche, M. O. Goebel, M. B. Kirkham, R. Horton, R. R. Van Der Ploeg, J. Bachmann
Abstract: Water repellency can be a significant factor in soil physical behaviour, but little is known about the depth dependence of the contact angle of field soils. We investigated contact angles and wetting properties as a function of depth for a wide range of agricultural and forest soils in Germany. The agricultural soils ranged from silty to sandy texture (six profiles), and the forest soils ranged from sandy to loamy texture (eight profiles). Contact angles (CA) were measured with the Wilhelmy plate method (WPM). In most of the soils, advancing WPM contact angles were considerably greater than 0° and they varied irregularly with depth. In general, sandy soils had larger WPM contact angles than silty soils. From the relation of the contact angle with texture and pH the quality of soil organic matter (SOM) was considered as more important for the wetting properties than the total amount of soil organic carbon (SOC). Finally, it was found that for soils with intermediate sand contents either under agricultural or forest use, the kind of land use seemed not to influence CA. Coarse-textured sandy soils that were used only as forest sites were more hydrophobic than silty soils which were exclusively used as agricultural soils. We conclude that a coarse texture favours, in combination with other factors (mainly pH), hydrophobic SOM.
Organisation(s): Institute of Soil Science
Section Soil Physics
External Organisation(s): Kansas State University
Iowa State University
Type: Article
Journal: European journal of soil science
Volume: 56
Pages: 239-251
No. of pages: 13
ISSN: 1351-0754
Publication date: 04.2005
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Soil Science
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 15 - Life on Land
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2389.2004.00664.x (Access: Unknown)