Structure library

Soil Structure Library

This soil structure library provides three main services to the soil science community

It is an archive of 3D images of soil structure including meta data on geographic location, site conditions and soil type
Soil structure is known to be of central importance for almost all soil functions. It reflects the soil as habitat for organisms including plants and it determines storage and buffer capacity for water, nutrients and other substances. Soil structure is difficult to access. It is only possible via tomographic imaging techniques. This open access library is a platform to exchange soil structures from a wide range of different soils all over the world. This should help to identify structural patterns in relation to locations of soil formation and it allows scientists to apply newly developed techniques of structure analysis to a wide spectrum of realistic structures.

The archive can also be browsed via a graphic visualization tool. The overview provides scatter plots showing the distribution of the main parameters for the images. The dat apoints can be filtered according to land use, soil type, or a certain range of parameters. A scatter plot for the soil granulometric contents as well as a map for the sampling locations are available.

You can upload your images to get standardised analysis on pore size distribution, pore connectivity, surface densities and other structural properties
Quantitative analysis of complex soil structure can be multifarious and oft requires substantial computing power. We offer standardised analysis for uploaded binary 3D images (typically pore-solid structure). This service is free of charge. You just need to provide the meta data for your soil sample and you should agree that the image data are made available to the public.

Reference: An open Soil Structure Library based on X-ray CT data