TypoSoil User Manual - For Soils Hydrostructural Characterization

The work presented in this document was realized in the frame of the Food Water Energy Nexus (NEF) program of QEERI in 2011 () of which the soil is the hidden part at the hearth of the nexus for developing a sustainable management of the resources, of which water and energy, and to give solutions for optimizing the food production.
So the first goal of our “Natural Environment modeling team” was to create a soil laboratory named Hydrostructural Pedology which is based on three main activities, all linked together:
1) Characterization of the physical properties of organization of the soil medium, its structure and its hydrostructural properties;
2) Mapping of “soil primary mapping units” that are considered homogeneous from the point of view of their internal organization (represented by the representative pedon and its horizons) and the hydrostructural properties of their horizon, each represented by its pedostructure (characterized in 1 above);
3) The physical modeling of the pedon and its internal organization as the growing medium for living organisms and plants in the critical zone. The pedon and its horizons are the solid part, structured, mappable, of the soil-plant-atmosphere system, Structural Representative Elementary Volume (SREV) of the soil primary mapping unit.
These 3 activities are established in a same unifying paradigm which is the systemic and thermodynamic approach of the natural medium initiated by Braudeau and Mohtar (2009). They turn around an hydrostructural characterization of the pedostructure that should provide the thermodynamic parameters of the two state equations of the soil medium: namely the pedostructure shrinkage curve V(W) and the pedostructure water retention curve h(W). It was for meeting the measurement requirements of this approach that the TypoSoil™ device was recently designed by Valorhiz and IRD (Bellier and Braudeau, 2011). It constitutes the only one actually existing in soil science that allows for a an accurate determination of the pedostructural parameters that are the identity of the soil horizons.

本文所展示的研究成果系于2011年由QEERI发起的食品-水-能源 Nexus（NEF）项目中实现，其中土壤作为Nexus的核心，是发展可持续资源管理（包括水资源和能源）的秘密所在，并为优化农业生产提供解决方案。因此，我们‘自然环境建模团队’的首要目标是创建一个名为Hydrostructural Pedology的土壤实验室，该实验室基于以下三个主要活动，三者相互关联：
1) 对土壤介质组织、结构和其水结构特性的物理性质进行表征；
2) 对‘土壤初级映射单元’进行映射，这些单元从其内部组织（由代表性土壤剖面及其层次代表）和水结构特性（由上述1中表征的土壤结构代表）的角度来看是均质的；
3) 对土壤剖面及其内部组织进行物理建模，作为临界区域中生物体和植物的生长介质。土壤剖面及其层次是土壤-植物-大气系统中的固体部分，是土壤初级映射单元的结构代表性基本体积（SREV）。
这三个活动建立在同一统一范式之上，即Braudeau和Mohtar（2009年）发起的自然介质系统与热力学方法。它们围绕土壤结构的 hydrostructural 特征展开，该特征应提供土壤介质两种状态方程的热力学参数：即土壤结构收缩曲线V(W)和土壤结构持水曲线h(W)。正是为了满足这一方法对测量的需求，Valorhiz和IRD（Bellier和Braudeau，2011年）最近设计了TypoSoil™设备。它是土壤科学中唯一真正存在的设备，能够准确确定土壤层次的身份——土壤结构参数。