ИСТИНА

Improvement of instrumental methods observed in the recent decades resulted in the growing potential of “information capacity” of the obtained data. Determination of particle size distribution (PSD) with the use of laser diffraction (LD) has a number of important advantages as compared with other techniques, among them: express analysis, small size of samples (50-600 mg) required and continuous PSD curve. In this work we tried to disclose the given advantages of this method used to analyze soil functioning processes with agrosoddy- podzolic soil of El’digino village (Moscow region) taken as an example. Ability of the LD method to analyze mg-degree samples made it possible to investigate minor soil components such as cutans and other soil neo-formations which was demonstrated in our research. We attempted to give a new vision of textural differentiation of soils. For this purpose we investigated PSD of average samples and made a comparative layer-by-layer analysis of cutans samples and intraped soil mass picked out from different depths. Also, we examined a possibility to adapt the grain-size soil characteristics obtained by other grain-size analysis methods to the outcomes of the LD analysis.