New soil water model improves conservation practices for sustainable agriculture.
The article explores how soil properties and management affect soil structure and water retention. By studying water retention curves near saturation, researchers found that certain model parameters can indicate soil structure stability. They discovered that as the inflection point (α) increases and the steepness of the curve (n) decreases, soil structure index (SI) also increases. This means that by understanding these parameters, we can better choose management practices to improve soil structure for specific purposes.