Technical Reference
⚫
57
Organic and Mineral soil definitions:
The general calibrations have been optimised to cover a wide
range of soil types, based on the following definitions:
Soil type
optimised
around
organic
content:
use for
organic
contents:
bulk
density
range:
(g.cm
-3
)
use for
bulk
densities:
(g.cm
-3
)
Mineral
~ 1 %C*
< 7 %C
1.25 - 1.5
> 1.0
Organic
~ 40 %C
> 7 %C
0.2 - 0.7
< 1.0
* Note: %C denotes “percentage Carbon” and is a measure of organic
content
Salinity
The preferred SI units for ionic conductivity are
mS.m
-1
(where S
is Siemens, the unit of electric conductance. Dimensionally it is
equivalent to the inverse of resistance i.e. Ohm
-1
).
The following conversions apply:
1 mS.m
-1
= 0.01 dS.m
-1
= 0.01 mS.cm
-1
= 10 µS.cm
-1
Soil salinity can be classified using the following descriptive
categories:
0
200
400
800
1600
600
1000
800
1200
1400
non-
saline
slightly
saline
moderately
saline
strongly
saline
extremely
saline
mS.m
-1
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
dS.m
-1
Classification of salinity
