Hydrostructural Pedology, Culmination of the Systemic Approach of the Natural Environment

Abstract

The subject of this article is the dynamics of water in a soil pedostructure sample whose internal environment is subjected to a potential gradient created by the departure of water through surface evaporation. This work refers entirely to the results and conclusions of a fundamental theoretical study focused on the molecular thermodynamic equilibrium of the two aqueous phases of the soil pedostructure. The new concepts and descriptive variables of the hydro-thermodynamic equilibrium state of the soil medium, which have been established at the molecular level of the fluid phases of the pedostructure (water and air) in a previous article, are recalled here in the systemic paradigm of hydrostructural pedology. They allow access to the molecular description of water migration in the soil and go beyond the classical mono-scale description of soil water dynamics. We obtain a hydro-thermodynamic description of the soil′s pedostructure at different hydro-functional scale levels including those relating to the water molecule and its atoms. The experimental results show a perfect agreement with the theory, at the same time validating the systemic approach that was the framework.

Keywords

• pedostructure
• systemic modelling
• systemic variables
• hydro-thermodynamic equilibrium
• Gibbs free energy
• fundamental thermodynamic variables