Soil aggregate stability:: A review

Soil aggregate stability is a crucial soil property affecting soil sustainability and crop production. A broad outline of the processes and agents of aggregate formation and aggregate stabilization are presented and discussed in this review. Aggregate stability is difficult to quantify and interpret. The aim of aggregate stability tests is to give a reliable description and ranking of the behavior of soils under the effect of water, wind and management. Numerous methods have been used to determine aggregate stability with varying success. The different methodologies complicate the comparison among aggregate stability data. It is also difficult to obtain a consistent correlation between aggregate stability and other important soil properties such as soil erodibility or crusting potential. This paper reviews the different methods of measurement of soil aggregate stability used in the literature, paying attention to the conditions of sample collection in the field and sample preparation and treatments in the laboratory. A unified methodological framework including the most interesting aspects of existing methods is suggested. The possibility of using aggregate stability data as an estimation of soil erodibility is also discussed.