Plants, Nutrients and Australian Soils

As well as influencing the look and feel of a soil, texture and structure have a strong influence on physical conditions such as aeration and drainage.

The presence of many large pore spaces (either between particles or aggregates) usually produces a well aerated, freely-draining soil (e.g. sandy soils) whereas a poorly structured clay may contain many but tiny pore spaces (micropores).

Although such micropores fill readily, they are slow to empty. Thus, while clayey soils can store considerable quantities of water they are also prone to waterlogging.

This diagram illustrates of the effect of soil particle size and degree of aggregation on pore size (the circles represent the soil particles and the background colour the pore spaces).