Soil water repellency: its causes, characteristics and hydro-geomorphological significance

. The holistic study of soils requires an interdisciplinary approach involving biologists, chemists, geologists, and physicists, amongst others, something that has been true from the earliest days of the field. In more recent years this list has grown to include anthropologists, economists, engineers, medical professionals, military professionals, sociologists, and even artists. This approach has been strengthened and reinforced as current research continues to use experts trained in both soil science and related fields and by the wide array of issues impacting the world that require an in-depth understanding of soils. Of fundamental importance amongst these issues are biodiversity, biofuels/energy security, climate change, ecosystem services, food security, human health, land degradation, and water security, each representing a critical challenge for research. In order to establish a benchmark for the type of research that we seek to publish in each issue of SOIL, we have outlined the interdisciplinary nature of soil science research we are looking for. This includes a focus on the myriad ways soil science can be used to expand investigation into a more holistic and therefore richer approach to soil research. In addition, a selection of invited review papers are published in this first issue of SOIL that address the study of soils and the ways in which soil investigations are essential to other related fields. We hope that both this editorial and the papers in the first issue will serve as examples of the kinds of topics we would like to see published in SOIL and will stimulate excitement among our readers and authors to participate in this new venture.

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The interdisciplinary nature of SOIL

Nanoporous materials with enhanced hydrophilicity and high water sorption capacity

Water repellency in soils: a historical overview

Effect of biochar application on soil hydrological properties and physical quality of sandy soil

The influence of clay type on reduction of water repellency by applied clays: a review of some West Australian work

In order to predict the occurrence of water repellency, which is a labile property, from field survey data obtained throughout the year, it is necessary to identify predictive relationships between water repellency and commonly measured soil properties. This paper evaluates these relationships for diverse soil assemblages. These soil assemblages include a set of reference soils from the south-west of Western Australia (an area of 250 000 km2), more intensively sampled suites of soils in several smaller soil{landscape associations within the south-west of Western Australia (≅1000 km2), soils from single farms (1-10 km2) and transects (≅0·001 km2), and single soil profiles (≅m2). The severity of water repellency was assessed by measuring water drop penetration time in seconds (WDPT) and was related to intrinsic properties of soils using log-transformed data. For the set of soils from the West Midland Sandplain the type of land use was also considered as a variable. There is a general tendency for WDPT to increase as organic matter content increases and decrease as the content of fine mineral material increases (clay, silt, very fine sand). However, there is no single soil property that is able to predict WDPT adequately. Furthermore, reliability of prediction decreases as the area of sampling increases. There appear to be no systematic differences in the capacity of organic matter from pasture or crop to induce water repellency, but increments of organic matter under bush increase water repellency at a greater rate than does organic matter from crop or pasture.

Relationships of water repellency to soil properties for different spatial scales of study

In order predict the susceptibility of soils to the development of water repellency, it is necessary to identify predictive relationships between water repellence and commonly measured soil properties. This paper evaluates these relationships for diverse groups of soil samples.

The soil assemblages include a set of reference soils from the south west of Western Australia (an area of 250 000 sq km), more intensively sampled suites of soils in several smaller soil landscape associations within the south west of Western Australia (≈1000 sq km), soils from single farms (1-10 sq km) and transects(≈0.001 sq km) and single soil profiles(≈sq m). The severity of water repellency was assessed by measuring water drop penetration time in seconds (WDPT) and was statistically related to intrinsic properties of soils using log transformed data. For the set of soils from the West Midland Sandplain the type of land use was also considered.

There is a general tendency for WDPT to increase as organic matter content increases and decrease as the content of fine mineral material increases (clay, silt, fine sand). However there is no single soil property that is able to adequately predict WDPT. Furthermore reliability of prediction decreases as the area of sampling increases. There appear to be no systematic differences in the capacity of organic matter from pasture or crop to induce water repellency but increments of organic matter under bush increase water repellency at a greater rate than does organic matter from crop or pasture.

Relationships of water repellency to soil properties for soils of southwestern Australia

In general, water repellency by soil increases with the increase of total organic matter and decreases as the clay and silt contents of the soil increase. The prediction of water repellency from soil organic carbon (OC) content may be improved by examining the types of carbon associated with water repellency. This paper examines the hypothesis that measurement of aliphatic C can provide a better prediction of water repellency than measurement of total OC and also looks at the effects of soil texture on water repellency and the amount of aliphatic C in the soil. DRIFT (diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform) spectra were measured on sandy soils from the West Midland Sandplains north of Perth in Western Australia. The areas of the aliphatic CH stretching signal (3000–2800/cm) and the OH stretching signal due to kaolin (3750–3570/cm) were used as relative measures of aliphatic carbon and kaolin contents. The relationships of aliphatic C and kaolin to water repellency have been examined and compared with the relationships of water repellency to total OC and clay contents of soil. Hydrophobic organic C as measured by DRIFT gave a better prediction of soil water repellency (r2 = 0.45) than did the total OC (r2 = 0.36). The specific hydrophobicity of organic matter (aliphatic C/OC ratio) increased as sand content increased. However, the direct influence of soil texture on water repellency was of more significance than its indirect influence on the amounts and forms of soil organic matter. A multivariate model including aliphatic C and clay + silt content was the best model for describing water repellency (r2 = 0.58). DRIFT is an effective, rapid method for screening soils for water repellent properties. For individual sand grains there was a weak positive relationship (r2 = 0.26) between the size of the aliphatic CH peak measured from surfaces of sand grains and the water repellency of the grains. A discontinuous aliphatic surface layer was present on the surface of individual sand grains.

The relationship of soil water repellency to aliphatic C and kaolin measured using DRIFT

The reduction of water repellency by added clay is influenced by clay and soil properties

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