Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
APPLIED SOIL ECOLOGY, cilt.54, ss.1-6, 2012 (SCI-Expanded)
The bio-dynamic relations of soil aggregate stability, as a widely accepted soil quality indicator, with the physical, chemical and biological soil properties are very complicated in the soil system, and there exist many methods of measuring the soil aggregate stability to establish these relations. This study aimed to evaluate different aggregate stability methodologies for loamy sand soils. The applied aggregate stability methods of the research chiefly involved sieving soil samples through either multiple sieves or a single sieve using operations of wet sieving, dry sieving, pre-wetting, slow wetting, fast wetting and mechanical breakdown. These were used either alone or in combination, and the methods were compared in terms of a detachability index (DI), which is the ratio of the Mean Weight Diameter after wet sieving (MWDW) to that before wet sieving (MWDD). The statistical analysis showed that the mean values of the DI for wet sieving by multiple sieves, fast wetting and mechanical breakdown varied significantly (*P < 0.05) from other methods. Clearly, depending upon the magnitude and extent of aggregate destructive forces, the DI changed significantly, and simulating diverse physical processes which could operate sequentially or simultaneously resulted in different consequences in terms of the aggregate stability. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.