Hydrostructural Pedology [Hardcover]

This book presents an in-depth guide to the subject matter and main points of hydrostructural pedology, as theorized for the first time. The authors focus on the underlying concepts, the purpose and role this field plays within agroenvironmental sciences.  It is divided into two parts.

Part 1 presents the theory behind  hydrostructural pedology. The systemic approach applied to the soil is presented, showing how this leads to the thermodynamic formulation of water in the soil’s organized medium and to the systemic modeling of soil–water-coupling in natural or anthropic organizations.

Part 2 presents the methodology to complement the first part. In it, the authors determine the hydrostructural characteristics of the pedostructure, characteristic parameters of equilibrium state equations and the hydrostructural functioning of the soil.

 

Preface ix

Part 1. Theory of Systemic Modeling of the Pedostructure within the Hierarchal Hydrofunctional Organization of the Natural Environment 1

Chapter 1. Introduction to Part 1 5

Chapter 2. Inherent Problems of Soil Science 9

2.1. History of pedology 9

2.2. Modeling of water transfers in the soil: supremacy of pedotransfer functions 11

2.3. Absence of a unitary theory of the description of soil 12

Chapter 3. The Systemic Approach Applied to Pedology 17

3.1. The Bertalanffy project and Le Moigne’s general system model 17

3.1.1. The general system theory and Cartesian precepts 17

3.1.2. Systemic representation: Le Moigne’s two great ideas 22

3.2. The systemic description of the soil organization 25

3.2.1lÓ[