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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Booneville, Arkansas » Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #389235
Research Project: Sustainable Small Farm and Organic Grass and Forage Production Systems for Livestock and Agroforestry

Location: Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center

Title: Hand-feel soil texture and particle-size distribution in Central France. Relationships and implications

Author
item RICHER-DE-FORGES, ANNE - Inrae
item ARROUAYS, DOMINIQUE - Inrae
item CHEN, SONGCHAO - Zhejiang Sci-Tech University
item ROMAN DOBARCO, MERCEDES - University Of Sydney
item Libohova, Zamir
item ROUDIER, PIERRE - Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research
item MINASNY, BUDIMAN - University Of Sydney
item BOURENNANE, HOCINE - Inrae

Submitted to: Catena
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/19/2022
Publication Date: 2/26/2022
Citation: Richer-De-Forges, A.C., Arrouays, D., Chen, S., Roman Dobarco, M., Libohova, Z., Roudier, P., Minasny, B., Bourennane, H. 2022. Hand-feel soil texture and particle-size distribution in Central France. Relationships and implications. Catena. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2022.106155.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2022.106155

Interpretive Summary: During soil survey campaigns soil texture has been routinely estimated in the field by hand from the soil surveyors. There is a considerable amount of soil texture data that is greater than the soil textures determined in the laboratory. The soil texture determined by the laboratory is also expensive and time consuming. There is a need to increase the density of points with measured data for improving soil texture maps that are important for determining soil water holding capacity. However, in order for the field determined soil textures to be used they need to have comparable accuracy with the laboratory data. Using samples that had soil texture measured in the field and laboratory we showed that trained and professional soil surveyors can predict soil texture classes with higher accuracy than previously stated in the literature. This is attributed to experienced surveyors who know their studied area. The study identifies some of the factors that explain some of the observed inconsistencies between hand feel and laboratory soil texture. These results are promising for the usefulness of hand-feel texture information for improving maps at filed and farm scales.

Technical Abstract: Field texture classes estimated by hand-feel by soil surveyors are more abundant than laboratory measurements of particle-size distribution. Thus, there is a considerable potential to use field-estimated soil textures for mapping on the condition that they are reliable and can be characterized by a probability distribution function similar to values obtained by laboratory measurements. We investigate and elucidate the differences between the field texture classes estimated by hand-feel and soil texture determined from particle-size analysis under laboratory conditions in a region of Central France. We explain some discrepancies between field estimates and laboratory measurements. Finally, we simulated the consequences of using particle-size distribution estimated from field texture on a pedotransfer function (PTF) for water retention. Considering laboratory measurements as the reference, the overall accuracy of field texture class allocation was 73%, which was better than most of the results previously reported in the literature. When looking at each field texture class, most predictions were consistent; however, there were noticeable differences between a few field texture classes and particle-size classes. The extreme texture classes located at the corners of the texture triangle were better predicted than those located at the centre of the triangle. We found the discrepancy of field texture classes can be explained by the very fine sand (50-100 µm) and very coarse sand (1000-2000 µm) contents. Based on the particle-size distribution from each field texture class, we calculated their joint probability distribution function of their corresponding laboratory measurements of clay, silt, and sand content. Results showed that PTF values predicted using hand-feel texture were consistent with those obtained with the measured particle-size distribution. Overall, we demonstrated the value of hand-feel texture in expanding the soil texture database and supporting the expansion of the national database to inform soil water retention properties.