COMPARISON OF THE BASIC PHYSICAL-PROPERTIES OF CHESTNUT SOILS

Using Chestnut soils of various textures in the lower Transvolga regio n, it is shown that the generally accepted indexes of the physical sta te of soils may be inadequate for investigating soil compaction. In th is case, changes can be identified from the permeability index (as det ermined by the tube method), which reflects the structure of the pore space and reacts to rearrangement of the pore space. In order to asses s the latter, several relationships are suggested which permit one to estimate the extent of textural and structural porosity as well as the degree of fissuring at various levels of moisture content, and the mo isture content corresponding to the critical air content.