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Influence of Initial Water Content on the Wettability of Autoclaved Soils
Author(s) -
Urbanek Emilia,
Bodi Merche,
Doerr Stefan H.,
Shakesby Richard A.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
soil science society of america journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1435-0661
pISSN - 0361-5995
DOI - 10.2136/sssaj2010.0164n
Subject(s) - wetting , soil water , water retention , water content , soil science , environmental science , environmental chemistry , chemistry , materials science , geology , geotechnical engineering , composite material
Autoclaving is a commonly used practice to destroy microbial activity in soils but is thought to have a limited effect on other soil properties. Small changes in chemical composition have been reported, but there have been no previous reports of any alteration of physical properties. This study, however, showed that autoclaving can cause a major change in soil hydraulic properties. For samples with intermediate water contents (10–35% v/v), it caused severe or extreme water repellency in three of four soil types tested, although no effect for initially low or high water contents was found. These findings have important implications for any experimental work involving soil autoclaving as a pretreatment procedure but could also be used for generating otherwise similar samples differing only in terms of wettability.