Grant

The objective of the project is to improve our understanding of the physical mechanisms that cause some soils to turn water repellent. Our hypothesis is that the microscopic heterogeneity of hydrophobic compounds explains why at given water contents and soil organic matter a soil turns suddenly from hydrophilic to water repellent. Such criticality can be explained using a percolation approach. This project is in collaboration with Prof. Jörg Bachmann (Uni-Hannover).