Applications of light and X-ray scattering to characterize the fractal properties of soil organic matter

Protection of organic carbon in soil microaggregates via restructuring of aggregate porosity and filling of pores with accumulating organic matter

“…Application of SAS to natural soil systems has focused on characterizing the fractal properties of soil particles, or humic substances extracted from soil (Borkovec et al, 1993;Tombacz et al, 1998;Rice et al, 1999;Diallo et al, 2005). The term ''fractal" implies a complex shape that appears similar at all scales of magnification; in SAS, a fractal approach is indicated if scattering curves strictly conform to a monotonic power-law increase in scattering intensity over a very large range in q.…”

Soil humic acid aggregation by dynamic light scattering and laser Doppler electrophoresis

“…According to our knowledge, most publications dealing with HS conformational changes investigated by DLS are related to HS extracted from water (Baalousha et al, 2006;Riggle and von Wandruszka, 2004;Alvarez-Puebla and Garrido, 2005) and peat (Pinheiro et al, 1996(Pinheiro et al, , 1998Perminova et al, 2003;Rice et al, 1999;Riggle and von Wandruszka, 2004), while only a few studies are dedicated to HSs isolated from coal (Alvarez-Puebla and Garrido, 2005), compost (Biagorri et al, 2007), and mineral soil (Rice et al, 1999). Hence, HA samples isolated from two different mineral soils, IHSS Elliot soil HA standard and HA from Rendzic Leptosol, were investigated in this study.…”

Applications of Fractals in the Study of Humic Materials

“…The majority of the studies utilizing a fractal approach to study humic materials have employed some form of scattering: light scattering [16][17][18][19], small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) [26][27][28][29][30][31][32], or turbidimetry [33][34][35][36][37][38]. The SAXS and SANS techniques have the advantage of being able to be applied to solid-or solution-phase samples.…”