SOIL ARCHITECTURE AND PREFERENTIAL FLOW ACROSS SCALES

In the spectrum of things in nature that range from nonliving to living, soils fall right in the middle – functioning as the bridge between the biotic and the abiotic worlds and possessing enormous internal power as the nurturing ground for life. The co-evolution of fast and slow processes in soils is the nature’s way of sustainable development, where hidden forces drive natural succession and non-closed fluxes lead to structural and informational accumulation in soil profiles. A new kind of physics is needed to enhance the understanding of complex soil systems, including the internal organization of soils in response to perturbations and the medium number syndrome (i.e., systems too complex for classical analytics and too organized for statistical treatment). This presentation will illustrate the new kind of physics needed for enhanced understanding and modeling of soil architecture and preferential flow across scales.