Abstract

AGOSTINI, María De Los Ángeles; MONTERUBBIANESI, María Gloria; STUDDERT, Guillermo Alberto  and  MAURETTE, Santiago. Un método simple y práctico para la determinación de densidad aparente. Cienc. suelo [online]. 2014, vol.32, n.2, pp.171-176. ISSN 1850-2067.

Soil physical condition is essential to define soil quality/health and is affected by management. Hence, it is necessary to monitor physical status of soils under cropping through sensitive and simple indicators. One of them is bulk density (DA), which is related to many soil functions and is sensitive to management practices. Reference methods to determine DA are tedious and time consuming and make difficult the frequent DA monitoring. The aim of this work was to compare the reference method to determine DA (cylinder method, MC) with a simpler alternative method (tubular sampler method, MM) which facilitates soil sampling. The experiment was carried out on Mollisols of Balcarce county under nine different soil use situations. We also evaluated method performance when applied by persons with different expertise in soil sampling. Bulk density obtained with MM was acceptably similar to that obtained with MC since variability in DA measured with MM explained 93% of the variability of DA measured with MC. On the other hand, the analysis of the mean of the differences of DA between methods showed a significant effect (p<0.05) of the level of experience of the operator, being higher when the operator had low expertise. Our results indicate that MM could be used regularly to measure DA in soils similar to those used in this study and to compare management situations and/or to calculate carbon or nutrient stock seeking for balances. However, the reliability of the measurements done with MM depends on the expertise or the training received by the person that apply it

Keywords : Methodology, porosity, soil health, survey.

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