Slakes: The first Soil aggregate stability mobile app

Abstract

Free to download from Google Play :
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=slaker.sydneyuni.au.com.slaker&hl=en

Slakes: A soil aggregate stability android application
Fajardo, M., McBratney, A.B., Field, D.J., Minasny, B.

We have developed a new methodology for the assessment of soil slaking in the form of a smart phone application (Android). To do this we had developed an image recognition algorithm that measures the projected area of soil aggregates immersed in water at regular intervals. Our results show that the kinetics of the slaking process can be effectively modelled using a three coefficients model (a, b and c), which are closely related to selected soil properties and land-use.
Coefficient a, is equivalent to the maximum slaking potential of the samples, and is found to be linearly related to exchangeable sodium, pH, clay percentage, calcium/magnesium and total carbon/nitrogen, and non-linearly related to total carbon. The coefficients b and c reflect the initial slaking and the slaking rate respectively and these were found to be linearly related to nitrogen and total carbon.
The methodology was originally presented in Fajardo et al. (2016) using a dataset covering great part of the agro-ecological variability of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. In this dataset, the coefficient a, was significantly lower in the natural sites reflecting a higher aggregate stability in those soils.
Having observed the potential of the methodology we have developed a smart phone application that is capable to measure the projected area of soil aggregates immersed in water in time, fit a model and return coefficients that can be finally used as a soil aggregate stability indicator.

Fajardo, M., McBratney, A.B., Field, D.J., Minasny, B., 2016. Soil slaking assessment using image recognition. Soil and Tillage Research 163, 119-129.