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All rock types (igneous rock, metamorphic rock and sedimentary rock) may be broken down into small particles to create soil. Weathering mechanisms are physical weathering, chemical weathering, and biological weathering [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Human activities such as excavation, blasting, and waste disposal, may also create soil.
Soil sieve nests with dry soil aggregates after removal from a laboratory drying oven. Soil aggregate stability is a measure of the ability of soil aggregates—soil particles that bind together—to resist breaking apart when exposed to external forces such as water erosion and wind erosion, shrinking and swelling processes, and tillage.
The materials left after the rock breaks down combine with organic material to create soil. Many of Earth's landforms and landscapes are the result of weathering, erosion and redeposition. Weathering is a crucial part of the rock cycle; sedimentary rock, the product of weathered rock, covers 66% of the Earth's continents and much of the ocean ...
Due to the hysteretic effect of water filling and draining the pores, different wetting and drying curves may be distinguished. The general features of a water retention curve can be seen in the figure, in which the volume water content, θ, is plotted against the matric potential, . At potentials close to zero, a soil is close to saturation ...
Water bead on a fabric that has been made non-wetting by chemical treatment. Wetting is the ability of a liquid to displace gas to maintain contact with a solid surface, resulting from intermolecular interactions when the two are brought together. [1] This happens in presence of a gaseous phase or another liquid phase not miscible with the ...
Soil physics is the study of soil's physical properties and processes. It is applied to management and prediction under natural and managed ecosystems. Soil physics deals with the dynamics of physical soil components and their phases as solids, liquids, and gases. It draws on the principles of physics, physical chemistry, engineering, and ...
A landslide, also called a landslip, [10] is a relatively rapid movement of a large mass of earth and rocks down a hill or a mountainside. Landslides can be further classified by the importance of water in the mass wasting process. In a narrow sense, landslides are rapid movement of large amounts of relatively dry debris down moderate to steep ...
Cycles of wetting and drying cause soil particles to be abraded to a finer size, as does the physical rubbing of material as it is moved by wind, water, and gravity. Organisms may reduce parent material size and create crevices and pores through the mechanical action of plant roots and the digging activity of animals. [28]