Grouping soils based on similarities in their textural, taxonomic, and/or structural properties has broad applications to pedology, hydrology, and soil science. In this study, we present a new approach for classifying soils using hydraulic conductivity data. We apply concepts from critical path analysis and calculate critical pore sizes at various water saturations from the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curves. Soils with similar critical pore size at the same effective water saturation are then grouped into the same class. To demonstrate the practical application of the proposed soil classification method, we use 102 samples including nine soil textures from the UNSODA database. Applying a curve clustering method, we find eight different soil classes within the studied data set.

中文翻译：

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土壤分类：一种使用不饱和导水率数据对土壤进行分组的新方法

根据质地、分类和/或结构特性的相似性对土壤进行分组，在土壤学、水文学和土壤科学中具有广泛的应用。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种使用水力传导率数据对土壤进行分类的新方法。我们应用关键路径分析中的概念，并根据非饱和水力传导率曲线计算各种水饱和度下的临界孔径。在相同的有效含水饱和度下具有相似临界孔径的土壤然后被归入同一类。为了演示所提出的土壤分类方法的实际应用，我们使用了 102 个样本，包括来自 UNSODA 数据库的九种土壤质地。应用曲线聚类方法，我们在研究的数据集中找到了八种不同的土壤类别。