Introducing Fractal Dimension to Estimation of Soil Sensitivity to Preferential Flow

Food dye Brilliant Blue was introduced as the tracer in a dye-tracing experiment to obtain dye profile patterns of sandy loam soil, aeolian sandy soil, percolating paddy soil and permeable paddy soil. The dyed soil profiles were then photographed and the photos were scanned into a computer. Edited with certainsoftware, only the dyed areas were left on the profile photos, which indicted the preferential flow paths for water and solute transport. Fractal dimensions of the dye patterns were calculated according to Arnold’s function. Soil particle size distribution was analyzed by pipette method. The regression analysis showed that there was significant relationship between soil clay content and fractal dimension D of the dye pattern of soil profile. Based on the experiment results, the possibility of introducing fractal dimension to estimation of soil sensitivity to preferential flow is discussed.