Comparison of Soil Pore Properties between Anthropogenic and Natural Paddy Field Soils From Computed Tomographic Images

Human influence on soil formation has dramatically increased with human civilization and industry development. Increase of anthropogenic soils induced researches on the anthropogenic soils; classification, chemical and physical characteristics of anthropogenic soils and plant growth from anthropogenic soils. However there have been no comprehensive analyses on soil pore or physical properties of anthropogenic soils from 3 dimensional images in Korea. The objectives of this study were to characterize physical properties of anthropogenic paddy field soils by depth and to find differences between natural and anthropogenic paddy field soils. Soil samples were taken from two anthropogenic and natural paddy field soils; anthropogenic (A_c) and natural (N_c) paddy soils with topsoil of coarse texture and anthropogenic (A_f) and natural (N_f) paddy soils with topsoil of fine texture. The anthropogenic paddy fields were reestablished during the Arable Land Remodeling Project from 2011 to 2012 and continued rice farming after the project. Natural paddy fields had no artificial changes or disturbance in soil layers up to 1m depth. Samples were taken at three different depths and analyzed for routine physical properties (texture, bulk density, etc.) and pore properties with computer tomography (CT) scans. The CT scan provided 3 dimensional images at resolution of 0.01 mm to calculate pore radius size, length, and tortuosity of soil pores. Fractal and configuration entropy analyses were applied to quantify pore structure and analyze spatial distribution of pores within soil images. The results of measured physical properties showed no clear trend or significant differences across depths or sites from all samples, except the properties from topsoils. The results of pore morphology and spatial distribution analyses provided detailed information of pores affected by human influences. Pore length and size showed significant decrease in anthropogenic soils. Especially, pores of A_c had great decrease in length compared to N_c. Fractal and entropy analyses showed clear changes of pore distributions across sites. The topsoil layer of A_c showed more degradation of pore structure than that of N_c, while pores of A_f topsoil did not show significant degradation compared with those of N_f. These results concluded that anthropogenic soils with coarse texture may have more effects on pore properties than ones with fine texture. The reestablished paddy fields may need more fundamental remediation to improve physical conditions.