soil texture triangle
soil texture triangle
Bonus Canadian edition:
Courtesy of @Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net and !soilscience@slrpnk.net
25 comments
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Learned about this from dwarf fortress.
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That was my immediate thought.
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Geotech class was great for a bunch of graphs that made you go WTF in what they were trying to show in a way that made sense visually.
The lab was really fun, though.
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How come clay isn't 100% clay?
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It has to do with classification of the soil type. Soils with high clay content function similarly in regard to the soil chemistry and in most fields: hydraulic flow. Soils with such a clay component to be designated as just "Clay" will have consistent structure characteristics and act as a restrictive layer.
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For a tank you mainly want it out of a water table. They should be watertight settling chambers.
Now your SSAS, your drainfield, where effluent is being applied to soils you're going to want sands and as little clay as possible. More importantly than soil type aside from excessive gravels is the intended application rate of effluent into the soil.
A larger drainfield applying effluent at a slower rate becomes more necessary as the soil type gets more smaller particles.
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Check out !soilscience@slrpnk.net You want loam or coarser textured soils for septic tanks.
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Paging /u/Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net and !soilscience@slrpnk.net
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25 comments
I don’t understand how to read the top one.
So the “a” in “loam” in the middle-bottom, it’s at an intersection of 3 lines. If I follow those lines to each side I see that loam is 60% clay, 40% silt, 60% sand, and 40% sand.
Ok, maybe I’m not supposed to follow the grey lines, but the cardinal directions? To the left, loam is 20% clay, to the right 80% silt, and below 50% sand.
The more I try to understand this chart the more confused I get.
Follow the orientation of the numbers. On the left, horizontal lines. On the bottom SE to NW lines () On the right, NE to SW lines (/)
So, loam is 20% clay, 40% sand, 40% silt.
You need a second backslash character for one to display. Currently the isn't displaying.
Oh shit, make sense now. Thank you!
the link is !soilscience@slrpnk.net
some info:
the equilateral triangle (US) one is confusing as fuck, if you're uninformed. Basically, start with two lines, and see where they take you (e.g., 30% clay, 40% sand). The third line tells you what the remaining percentage of the 3rd textural size is (e.g., in this case, silt).
In the Right angle Triangle (Canadian one) sand and clay to derive your texture. silt is implied (e.g., solve for 'x').
gravel gets counted later, and classified as coarse fragments.
Didn't realize there was one unique size for gravel. I'd call gravel anything from slightly bigger than sand to bit smaller than a golf ball.
Took me a while too. The left numbers “clay” are the gray lines that are flat (left to right), the right numbers “silt” go top-right to bottom-left and the bottom numbers “sand” go bottom-right to top left.
The intersection of any point is the sum of the 3 numbers and always equals 100. So for example, to get “silty clay loam” (middle right side). You follow the 30% for clay line, then the 60% for silt and finally 10% for sand. Those three equals 100%.
I kept doing what you were too and could not understand why I kept getting over 100% until someone else explained it to me.
I think I get it. The arrows on the labels show the direction to read, but aren’t actually by the percentage the represent. Sand percentages are on the left, silt on the bottom, and clay on the right?
This chart would benefit from color coding the lines and moving the labels and arrows to the values that you’re supposed to read.
From my understanding, the grey lines are for the silt and clay axis, the sand axis is just read vertically and there are no lines.