Robust methods are needed to assess tillage-induced changes in the physical quality of agricultural soils. Most soil physical quality (SPQ) evaluation procedures are based on the analysis of a limited number of soil cores randomly sampled in the soil profile. Such procedures likely fail to properly capture the spatial patterns in soil structure induced by tillage implements and vehicle traffic, resulting in a misleading SPQ diagnosis. We propose a hybrid method that couples high-resolution soil penetration resistance measurements with soil core sampling to derive high-resolution data grids of SPQ indicators encompassing the soil profile structural heterogeneity. The method builds on strong experimental relationships between soil penetration resistance and bulk density, and between bulk density and the soil hydraulic properties. We tested our method on a silt-loam soil with three tillage treatments (moldboard plowing, deep loosening with a tine cultivator, and minimum tillage), each including a zone impacted by the wheel traffic. The results allow visualization and analysissis of of the effect of tillage treatments and vehicle traffic on the soil SPQ indicators with a high level of spatial detail. The proposed methodology can be used to compare various soil management techniques or to monitor the temporal evolution of SPQ. As such, it can be a valuable tool to guide agricultural soil management. Furthermore, the generated high-resolution soil physical parameter grids could be used to parameterize numerical hydrodynamic models and estimate water and solute fluxes with distributed parameters representing the actual soil profile heterogeneity.

需要稳健的方法来评估耕作引起的农业土壤物理质量的变化。大多数土壤物理质量 (SPQ) 评估程序基于对土壤剖面中随机采样的有限数量的土壤核心的分析。此类程序可能无法正确捕捉由耕作工具和车辆通行引起的土壤结构中的空间模式，从而导致 SPQ 诊断产生误导。我们提出了一种混合方法，将高分辨率土壤渗透阻力测量与土壤核心采样相结合，以获得包含土壤剖面结构异质性的 SPQ 指标的高分辨率数据网格。该方法建立在土壤渗透阻力与容重之间以及容重与土壤水力特性之间的强大实验关系之上。我们在粉砂壤土上测试了我们的方法，采用三种耕作处理（犁板犁、用尖头中耕机深松和最少耕作），每种处理都包括一个受车轮交通影响的区域。结果允许以高度的空间细节可视化和分析耕作处理和车辆交通对土壤 SPQ 指标的影响。所提出的方法可用于比较各种土壤管理技术或监测 SPQ 的时间演变。因此，它可以成为指导农业土壤管理的宝贵工具。此外，生成的高分辨率土壤物理参数网格可用于参数化数值水动力模型，并使用代表实际土壤剖面异质性的分布参数估计水和溶质通量。