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Prescence and Prediction of Fractal Behavior in Particle-Size

Distributions As Affected By the Sample Pretreatment and Soil
Properties

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0038-075X/06/17104-283–292 April 2006
Soil Science Vol. 171, No. 4
Copyright * 2006 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. Printed in U.S.A.

PRESENCE AND PREDICTION OF FRACTAL BEHAVIOR IN

PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS AS AFFECTED BY THE SAMPLE
PRETREATMENT AND SOIL PROPERTIES
S. Stanchi1, E. Bonifacio1, E. Zanini 1, and Y. Pachepsky2

The fragmentation fractal dimension has been used to characterize soil

particle and aggregate-size distributions. Deviations from strict self-
similarity were often reported. In particle-size distribution determination,
different dispersion and pretreatment methods can create different
fragmentation. The objectives of this work were (i) to investigate fractal
behavior of soil as influenced by the presence of the fragmentation-
enhancing pretreatment before particle-size distribution determination
and (ii) to predict the presence/absence of the fractal behavior from soil
chemical and physical properties by applying discriminant analysis and
classification trees and comparing the efficiency of the two methods.
Paired particle-size distribution determinations with and without removal
of organic and inorganic binding agents were conducted for 85 samples of
soils from various genetic and textural classes found in southern Italy.
A total of 20 chemical and physical properties of soil were measured in the
same samples. Discriminant analysis and classification trees were applied
to predict the presence or absence of the fractal scaling in particle-size
distribution from soil basic properties. Only 31 samples displayed strict
fractal behavior after pretreatment, whereas 44 did when the aggregating
agents were not removed. Classification trees rendered better prediction
of the presence of the strict fractal behavior of soil particle-size
distributions for each of the determination methods when compared
with the discriminant analysis. The presence of the strict fractal behavior
was primarily defined by fine silt content and influenced by contents of
coarse silt, coarse sand, and exchangeable calcium content. (Soil Science
2006;171:283–292)

Key words: Texture, aggregation, classification trees, discriminant

analysis, fragmentation.

dimensions have been proposed to Millan et al., 2003). However, application of

F RACTAL
quantify scale-invariant processes that are
common in nature (Turcotte, 1986, 1989). In
soil science, the fragmentation fractal dimension
(Df) has been successfully applied to characterize
soil particle-size distribution (PSD) and aggregate-
size distribution (e.g., Tyler and Wheatcraft,
1992; Rasiah et al., 1995; Anderson et al., 1998;
1Università degli Studi di Torino, Di.Va.P.R.A. Chimica Agraria, Via L. da Vinci
44, 10095 Grugliasco (TO), Italy. Dr. Stanchi is corresponding author. E-mail:
silvia.stanchi@unito.it.
2USDA-ARS, Environmental Microbial Safety Laboratory, Beltsville Agricultural
Research Center, Beltsville, MD.
Received June 22, 2005; accepted Nov. 23, 2005.
DOI: 10.1097/01.ss.0000209357.53536.43
both linear (Tyler and Wheatcraft, 1992; Bittelli
et al., 1999) and nonlinear (Rasiah et al., 1995;
Millan et al., 2003) regression methods for
Df estimation showed deviations of measured
size distributions from strict self-similarity, that
is, from strict fractal behavior. Many authors
investigated this problem in the 0 to 2-mm size
range, based on the following hypotheses, which
are not mutually exclusive: (i) only some soil
textures can show fractal behavior (e.g., Tyler
and Wheatcraft, 1992; who outlined some
fractal regions on the United States Department
of Agriculture textural triangle), and (ii) the
deviation from strict self-similarity is due to
the assumption of a single fractal domain

283

Copyr ight © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
284 STANCHI ET AL.
(e.g., Bittelli et al., 1999; who proposed a
multidomain scaling) or to other model assump-
tions (e.g., constant density and failure proba-
bility, as suggested by Perfect, 1997; Anderson
et al., 1998).
Both hypotheses suggest an effect of soil
chemical and physical characteristics affecting
aggregation on the scaling properties in this size
range. Moreover, the first hypothesis might be
related to the PSD determination method, which
is not unique (Gee and Bauder, 1986) because it
depends on the aim of the analysis (Richie, 1963).
In fact, without the complete removal of organic
and inorganic cementing agents, sand-sized, silt-
sized, and clay-sized aggregates are actually
determined, instead of primary particles. The
standard United States Department of Agricul-
ture procedure for PSD determination involves
the removal of soluble salts and organic matter
(Burt, 2004), but the choice of whether to per-
form additional pretreatments to remove inorganic
cementing agents, such as Fe oxides, carbonates, or
silica, is left to the operator. Depending on this
choice, different size distributions will be obtained.
In contrast, water-dispersible PSD may also be
determined for special purposes, such as the assess-
ment of soil erodibility (Burt, 2004). As a
consequence, the presence or the absence of the
fractal scaling, too, might be related to soil
chemical and physical properties, because aggre-
gating agents may be unevenly distributed in the
size classes (Tisdall and Oades, 1982). This may
affect the susceptibility of soil particles to fragmen-
tation and dispersion during sample preparation;
in fact, the dispersion procedures used before
textural analysis are actually fragmentation pro-
cesses (Bittelli et al., 1999). As a consequence of a
weak fragmentation process, after water or Na-
hexametaphosphate dispersion, but without the
removal of organic matter and Fe oxides, particles
are still aggregates, and therefore, they can under-
go further fragmentation when pretreated with
H2O2 and Na-dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate.
The presence of the fractal scaling in PSD
can be therefore evaluated for different frag-
mentation pathways defined by the treatment
before dispersion. In the case of aggregate-size
distributions, it has been observed that fractal
dimensions decrease with the increase in the
organic matter content and increase with the
increase in clay (Perfect and Kay, 1991; Rasiah
et al., 1993). However, no attempt has been
made to find relationships between the presence
of the fractal behavior and soil chemical proper-
ties inf luencing soil aggregation-fragmentation.
Copyr ight © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
SOIL SCIENCE
Should such dependencies exist, opportunities
to predict fractal scaling would appear.
Because the list of properties affecting the
presence of scaling can be large, and it is not a
priori clear which of them are the most efficient
predictors of the fractal behavior, statistical meth-
ods have to be used to select the most influential
predictors. Two such methods have been exten-
sively applied in soil studies. Discriminant analysis
was used first by Webster and Burrough (1974) to
describe soil classes and then applied in the study of
soil genesis (e.g., Berg, 1980), in the evaluation of
the fertility characteristics (e.g., Frevert, 1986;
Bonifacio et al., 2000) and in the assessment of
the effect of agricultural practices on soil physical
properties (e.g., Quiroga et al., 1998). Classifica-
tion and regression trees (Breiman et al., 1993) are
another technique that has been used to discover
structure in data, mainly when there are many
variables that can mask the effect of each other
(Rawls and Pachepsky, 2002; Scull et al., 2005).
The objective of this work was twofold: (i) to
investigate the fractal behavior of soil as inf lu-
enced by the presence of the fragmentation-
enhancing treatment before PSD determination
and (ii) to predict the presence/absence of frac-
tal behavior from soil chemical and physical
properties by applying discriminant analysis and
classification trees and to compare the efficiency
of the two methods.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study Area and Soils
The study area is located in Southern Italy
(40-22–40-35 N; 15-42–16-01 E). It covers the
Camastra river basin, with a total surface of 358
km2 and a mean altitude of 950 m above sea
level. Vegetation is represented by the beech
cover in the upper part of the slopes, grasslands,
fallow, or oak woods in the lower section. Bare
soil and pioneer plant communities dominate
the f lat alluvial areas. Geology is highly variable.
Carbonate rocks, typical of mountain massifs,
are associated to marls on ancient river terraces
and lower positions in the relief, whereas clays
are often present on highlands, covered some-
times by more recent sands and silt deposits and
conglomerate formations. Depending on site
conditions, Entisols and Inceptisols prevail, but
Alfisols and Mollisols are also represented.
Soil Analysis and Treatments
Soil samples were collected from 33 profiles
(85 horizons), then air-dried and sieved with
VOL. 171 ~ NO. 4 FRACTAL BEHAVIOR IN PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS
2-mm sieves. Zanini et al. (1995) reported pH,
organic C content, CaCO3 content, cation
exchange capacity (CEC), base saturation (BS),
exchangeable cations, Na-dithionite-citrate-
bicarbonate–extractable Fe (FeDCB), and NH4-
oxalate–extractable Fe (FeO) in those samples.
The soil texture was determined by the pipet
method (Gee and Bauder, 1986) following two
different dispersion methods. We prepared two
replicates for each determination method.
Method 1 included the pretreatment of the 2-
mm fraction of the samples with hydrogen
peroxide and Na-dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate
(Mehra and Jackson, 1960) and then dispersion
with Na-hexametaphosphate. Method 2 con-
sisted of dispersion with Na-hexametaphosphate
without any pretreatment. Symbols ‘‘P’’ and
‘‘NP’’ are used for pretreated and non-pretreated
samples, respectively.
The fragmentation fractal dimension Df was
estimated from PSDs according to Tyler and
Wheatcraft (1992), using five size classes: coarse
sand (0.2–2 mm), fine sand (0.05–0.2 mm),
coarse silt (0.02–0.05 mm), fine silt (0.002–0.02
mm), and clay (G0.002 mm). Values of Df were
calculated as slopes of the log-log plot of
cumulative mass versus upper sieve radius. To
evaluate the goodness of fit, two criteria were
used: the determination coefficient of the regres-
sion line, following the example of Rasiah et al.,
(1995) and of Millan et al., (2003), and the eval-
uation of the residuals, to investigate the pres-
ence of systematic deviations from the model. A
threshold value of 0.95 for the r2 was used to
discriminate between fractal (F) and nonfractal
(NF) subsets. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
(Sokal and Rohlf, 1969) was used to assess the
statistical significance of the deviation from
normal distribution. Values of DfP and DfNP
were compared using a paired-samples t test
(Sokal and Rohlf, 1969).
Discriminant analysis was performed on NP
and P data sets using the SPSS software (SPSS Inc.,
Chicago, Ill). Presence of fractal behavior was used
as the categorical grouping variable. Initially, all
the variables were included in the analysis, then
some were excluded by using the stepwise method
and determining the Wilks lambda index, the
eigenvalue, and the misclassification rate to assess
the goodness of the model (Norusis, 1985). We
also carried out classification tree analysis (Breiman
et al., 1993) using the Splus software (MathS.ft
Inc. Cambridge, MA). We set 4 as the minimum
number of observations in a branch that can be
further split. We then evaluated the goodness of
Copyr ight © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
285
the classification using the misclassification rates.
This value was selected after several trial runs of
the model in which we varied the minimum
number of observations from 10 to 3 and with the
goal of achieving a good detail in the classification
while avoiding overbranching (Breiman et al.,
1993). By changing the limit value from 4 to 3, we
did not achieve any further improvement in detail.
RESULTS
Differences Between Soil Properties in Fractal
and Nonfractal Samples
Values of the fragmentation fractal dimension
DfP (Table 1) on pretreated samples ranged from
2.627 to 2.938, with an average value of 2.837,
whereas on non-pretreated samples, they ranged
from 2.334 to 2.896, with an average of 2.727.
Values of DfP were significantly higher than
DfNP (t test, P G 0.01), indicating a greater
degree of fragmentation of soil after the destruc-
tion of organic and inorganic binding agents. A
poor, although significant, correlation (r = 0.325,
P G 0.01) was observed between DfNP and DfP.
The determination coefficient varied from
0.80 and 0.99 for NP samples, and the 0.95
threshold allowed us to identify 44 samples
displaying strict fractal behavior (F), with an
average value of 0.97. The 41 NF samples had
an average r2 of 0.90 (Table 1).
The Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic was non-
significant (always P 9 0.30), indicating the
normality of distributions of residuals. No indi-
cations of bias in the model were found from the
analysis of the probability plots. However, the
presence of a trend was observed in the scatter-
plots of standardized residuals versus predicted
values for 34 samples, all in the NF set.
The P samples showed determination coef-
ficients varying from 0.79 to 0.99, but only 31
cases had values more than 0.95 and were thus
considered to belong to the F subset. The NF
subset showed average r2 values of 0.88, whereas
r2 in the F group was 0.97, on the average
(Table 1). The residual analysis showed results
similar to those obtained with NP samples.
The 31 soils showing fractal behavior after
pretreatment mainly belonged to the sandy clay
loam, sandy loam, and clay texture classes. Clays
and clay loams dominated instead in the P non-
fractal subset. Most of the non-pretreated fractal
samples were sandy loam, sandy clay loam, and
clay, whereas the majority of the NP nonfractal
were loam, sandy loam, and clay loam (Fig. 1).
In addition, soil physical and chemical properties
286 STANCHI ET AL. SOIL SCIENCE

TABLE 1
Average values of significant chemical and physical properties for different
PSD determination methods, considering F and NF subsets
P
(n = 85) NP
(n = 85)
Variable
F. (n = 31) NF. (n = 54) P F (n = 44) NF (n = 41) P
DfP 2.800 2.859 G0.001 2.718 2.737 0.001
DfNP 2.724 2.730 0.843 2.817 2.859 0.502
r2 0.97 0.88 G0.01 0.97 0.90 G0.01
Coarse sand P (%) 26.3 13.3 G0.001 23.3 12.4 G0.001
Coarse sand NP (%) 34.6 28.4 0.055 36.3 24.6 G0.001
Fine sand P (%) 24.2 17.1 G0.001 22.3 16.9 0.007
Fine sand NP (%) 24.3 19.6 0.027 23.7 18.7 0.015
Coarse silt P (%) 5.8 5.3 0.588 5.1 5.9 0.357
Coarse silt NP (%) 7.0 7.4 0.707 6.0 8.6 0.002
Fine silt P (%) 15.4 25.4 G0.001 17.8 26.0 G0.001
Fine silt NP (%) 16.4 23.5 G0.001 16.1 26.1 G0.001
Clay P (%) 28.4 38.9 G0.001 31.6 38.8 0.005
Clay NP (%) 17.6 21.2 0.219 17.8 22.0 0.126
Coarse sand P/coarse 0.77 0.49 G0.001 0.67 0.51 0.006
sand NP (%)
pH 7.8 7.2 0.002 7.5 7.4 0.681
CaCO3 (g/kg) 85.7 62.1 0.323 67.6 73.9 0.785
Corg (g/kg) 11.2 21.0 0.020 14.6 20.6 0.144
N (g/kg) 1.25 2.14 0.027 1.51 2.14 0.102
CEC (cmolc/kg) 19.1 27.8 0.001 21.3 28.2 0.005
Caexch (cmolc/kg) 16.29 20.46 0.042 15.80 22.31 0.001
Mgexch (cmolc/kg) 1.24 1.77 0.023 1.39 1.78 0.088
Kexch (cmolc/kg) 0.36 0.46 0.207 0.36 0.49 0.084
BS (%) 95.1 83.7 0.004 86.9 88.9 0.608
FeDCB (g/kg)- 14.8 19.1 0.017 17.2 17.9 0.692
FeO (g/kg)‘ 1.9 3.5 0.012 2.3 3.6 0.039

P indicates texture after pretreatment with H O and Na-dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate; NP, no pretreatment.
2 2
.
F indicates strict fractal behavior; NF, nonstrictly fractal behavior.

showed significant differences between methods,
as shown in Table 1. The F and NF groups had
different coarse sand (P) and fine silt contents, CEC,
and exchangeable Ca content and FeO content.
Only 26 samples showed fractal behavior in
both cases, and 36 in none. Five samples were
fractal only when pretreated. Eighteen samples
showed the opposite effect; that is, fractal behavior
without pretreatment changed to the nonfractal
one with pretreatment. According to the changes
in fractal behavior, four groups were identified
(Table 2). Analysis of variance showed that some
chemical and physical properties were significantly
different among these four groups (Table 2).
Among those properties were DfP (P G 0.001),
the ratio of coarse sand contents with pretreat-
ment and without pretreatment (P G 0.001), the
organic C (P = 0.035) content, pH (P G 0.001),
the CaCO3 content (P = 0.048), the CEC (P =
0.002) and the exchangeable Ca content (P =
0.007), the BS (P G 0.001), FeDCB (0.049), and
FeO (P = 0.019). Considering textural variables,
the sand content and the NP coarse silt, the fine
silt, and the P clay contents showed significant
differences among the four groups described in
Table 2. The soils with ‘‘always fractal’’ PSD had
lower DfP, a coarse sand ratio (coarse sand
contents with pretreatment/coarse sand contents
without pretreatment) closer to 1, relatively low
C and Fe contents, and lower exchangeable Ca
content together with high BS. The ‘‘always
nonfractal’’ soils had higher DfP, a lower coarse
sand ratio, and higher C and Fe contents
compared with the ‘‘always fractal’’ ones.
Discriminant Analysis and Classification Trees
The discriminant function for the P set was:
0:676 coarse sand þ 0:490 base saturation
j0:412 f ine silt ð1Þ
for P G 0.001, with a misclassification rate of 15
of 85 (Table 3), whereas the one describing the
NP set was:
0:883 f ine silt þ 0:503 Ca þ 0:482 coarse silt ð2Þ

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VOL. 171 ~ NO. 4 FRACTAL BEHAVIOR IN PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS 287

for P G 0.001, with misclassification rate of 9
of 85.
Eigenvalues, indicating the ratio of the sum
of squares between groups to that within groups
and therefore commonly used to evaluate the
goodness of the model (Norusis, 1985) ranged
from 0.71 (P set) to 0.93 (NP set), which can still
be considered acceptable. The Wilks lambda
statistic, another index expressing the goodness
of the classification, was 0.59 for P and 0.52 for
NP, which is satisfactory according to Webster
(1971). The P data set discriminant function was
dominated by a textural variable (coarse sand),
followed by BS and fine silt. In the NP data set,
another textural variable, that is, fine silt, showed
the highest coefficient, followed by exchangeable
Ca content and coarse silt. The subset centroids
in NP (j0.98 for NF and 0.92 for F) were better
separated than the centroids in P (j0.63 for NF
and 1.10 for F). This suggested a larger overlap
between subsets in P. The absolute frequencies
of discriminant scores clearly showed an over-
lapping of the F and NF samples, when the
pretreatment is used (Fig. 2). As a consequence,
the misclassification rate was lower in the NP
data set.
Classification trees were developed separately
for P and NP samples (Fig. 3). The presence/
absence fractal scaling was the categorical variable
to classify.
In the P tree, the fine silt content higher than
26.3% determined the first partition, leading to
the NF subset. The second partition was deter-
mined by the coarse sand content: if the coarse
sand percentage was less than 9.0%, then the soil
was classified as NF. If not, the fine silt content
entered again, leading to the NF subset when
lower than 8.7%. The misclassification rate was
3 of 85 (Table 3).
In the NP tree, the fine silt content also
determined the first partition. If the fine silt
content was more than 25.0%, the soil was
immediately classified as NF with no misclassifi-
cation. The soil was also classified as NF with fine
silt less than 25.0% and coarse silt more than
10.3%. If, instead, coarse silt was less than 10.3%
and the Ca content was less than 21.8 cmolc/kg,
the subset was F, as well as if the Ca content

Fig. 1. Texture of pretreated and non pretreated samples. The - line separates regions of fractal and nonfractal
behavior as suggested by Tyler and Whetcraft (1992).

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288 STANCHI ET AL. SOIL SCIENCE

TABLE 2
Selected chemical and physical properties of soil samples for different determination methods (average values)
Always fractal Never fractal Only P
fractal Only NP
fractal
P
(n = 26) (n = 36) (n = 5 ) (n = 18)
DfP G0.001 2.794b 2.863a 2.831ab 2.850a
DfNP 0.386 2.734 2.746 2.670 2.696
Coarse sand P (%) G0.001 26.6a 10.7b 24.4a 18.4b
Coarse sand NP (%) G0.001 34.2a 22.9b 36.9ab 39.5a
Fine sand P (%) 0.004 24.9a 16.4b 20.8ab 18.6ab
Fine sand NP (%) 0.033 25.7 18.9 17.3 20.9
Coarse silt P (%) 0.054 6.1 6.1 3.9 3.7
Coarse silt NP (%) 0.010 6.4 8.3 10.5 5.5
Fine silt P (%) G0.001 14.8b 27.1a 18.1ab 22.0a
Fine silt NP (%) G0.001 15.3b 26.6a 22.4ab 17.2b
Clay P (%) 0.001 27.6b 39.7a 32.7ab 37.3a
Clay NP (%) 0.150 18.5 23.3 13.2 16.9
Coarse sand P/coarse G0.001 0.79a 0.49b 0.65ab 0.48b
sand NP (%)
pH G0.001 7.9a 7.4a 7.1ab 6.8b
CaCO3 (g/kg) 0.048 99.5 82.3 13.6 21.6
Corg (g/kg) 0.035 8.7b 20.0a 24.3a 23.0a
CEC (cmolc/kg) 0.002 17.6b 28.5a 26.6ab 26.5ab
Caexch (cmolc/kg) 0.007 15.77b 22.77a 18.96ab 15.83ab
Mgexch (cmolc/kg) 0.133 1.21 1.84 1.39 1.65
Kexch (cmolc/kg) 0.275 0.36 0.51 0.35 0.36
BS (%) G0.001 98.04a 90.14a 80.05ab 70.88b
FeDCB (g/kg)
0.049 14.5 18.1 16.8 21.2
FeO (g/kg)

0.019 1.4b 3.5a 4.1ab 3.5ab

P indicates texture after pretreatment with H2O2 and Na-dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate; NP, no pretreatment.

exceeded this threshold value with DfNP less results, both in terms of explained variance and
than 2.816. In this case, the misclassification rate goodness of classification in this case. The
was 4 of 85 (Table 3). classification tree is reported in Fig. 4. The fine
silt content again entered as the first retained
Transitions Between F and NF Groups variable, with a threshold value of 25%, whereas
The presence/absence of conservation of the second branching was determined by fine silt
fractal behavior was predicted using as target and CEC. High fine silt contents immediately
variables the four groups described in Table 2. led to always NF behavior. Coarse and fine silt
The discriminant analysis led to unsatisfactory contents appeared several times as intermediate
split variables. The exchangeable Ca and Mg
TABLE 3 contents appeared after, leading to the terminal
Number of misclassified cases in discriminant analysis and branches. Lower silt contents, associated with
classification trees low CEC and low Mg contents, always led to
Data- F
(observed) but NF
(observed) the fractal group. A final branching was deter-
Method
set classified as NF but classified as F mined by pH, too, where highest values were
Discriminant P. 8 7 associated with always fractal samples. In this
analysis case, the misclassification error was 9 of 85.
Discriminant NP. 3 6
analysis
Classification P. 0 3 DISCUSSION
tree
Classification NP. 1 3 The P data set was obtained after destruction
tree of the organic and inorganic binding agents that

F indicates strict fractal behavior; NF, nonstrictly fractal affect the formation of aggregates from primary
behavior. particles (Tisdall and Oades, 1982), the NP
.
P indicates texture after pretreatment with H2O2 and ref lects a lower level of fragmentation, and ag-
Na-dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate; NP, no pretreatment. gregates are still present.

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VOL. 171 ~ NO. 4 FRACTAL BEHAVIOR IN PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS 289

Fig. 2. Absolute frequencies and discriminant scores for the F and NF subsets, for pretreated and non pretreated
samples.

In both cases, we detected deviations from
strict self-similarity for several samples. We
realize that defining fractal behavior in terms of
the threshold value of the determination coef-
ficient introduces some arbitrariness in the
separation of soil samples in this study. How-
ever, the qualitative results on the role of basic
soil properties in the presence of fractal scaling
would hold when we varied the threshold value
from 0.92 to 0.97 (data not shown). Moreover,
the residual analysis indicated that no systematic
deviations from the model are present; there-
fore, the determination coefficient can be used
as an objective index to split the two groups of
behavior. Even if some authors (Bittelli et al.,
1999) related the lack of strict self-similarity to
the presence of different fractal domains (sand,
silt, and clay) in the particle range, we could not
adopt this approach because of the limited
number of classes.
The F and NF soils after the P treatment
showed significant differences both in the DfP
and in several chemical properties (Table 1).
When the samples are pretreated, so that the
action of aggregating agents is not taken into
account, Df is expected to depend mainly on the
type of parent material and therefore on the
specific physical and fragmentation properties of
the material (Turcotte, 1986, 1989). Soil devel-
opment is expected to smooth this effect, but
textural differences related to parent material are
still visible in Alfisols (Macias and Chesworth,
1992). The differences found in PSDs of pre-
treated soils originated from different geologic
substrates in the study area (P G 0.01, data not
shown) supported these hypotheses. For exam-
ple, all the soils developing on fine-textured
parent materials, such as clays and marls, had the
highest DfP, with an average of 2.862, whereas
those on coarse-textured sediments, such as
sands, typically showed the lowest DfP, with an
average value of 2.781, indicating a PSD
dominated by coarser particles. In the study
area, therefore, NF soils are generally developed

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290 STANCHI ET AL.
Fig. 3. Classification trees. Branch size is proportional to
the measure of improvement in classification after the
split. In brackets, the number of samples for each final
branch.
on fine-textured parent materials and, indepen-
dently from their development stage, are poorer
in sands (Table 1).
Such trends linked to parent material were
not evident in the NP data set, as they were
probably masked by the effect of aggregation,
and no significant differences in DfNP were
found between F and NF samples.
The clay-sized classes are known to inf lu-
ence the value of Df (e.g., Perfect and Kay,
1991); however, the strict fractal behavior seems
to be more inf luenced by silt, as found both in
the discriminant analysis and the classification
trees. This might be related to the fact that the
intermediate sizes (silt range) are in general
responsible for the anomalies leading to non-
fractal behavior in the data set we analyzed. The
silt content had a major role as a predictor of the
fractal behavior for both methods. The predic-
tive capability of silt might therefore depend on
different soil processes for the two PSD deter-
mination methods we considered. As for NP
soils, it might be linked to the interactions
between the mineral fraction and organic matter
in soil aggregation processes. The high presence
of organic matter in silt-sized fractions has been
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SOIL SCIENCE
documented first by Ahmed and Oades (1984),
and then reported in literature for different
environments. Boix-Fayos et al. (2001) found
that the proportion of some microaggregate
fractions, mainly silt and clay sized, is positively
correlated with organic matter content; Curtin
(2002) observed a higher concentration of
organic C in the silt fraction compared with
clay. On the other hand, the role of silt as a
leading classification variable for pretreated soils
requires a different explanation. Although some
evidence of the physical protection of organic
matter by aggregates has been reported in the
literature (Pulleman and Marinissen, 2004), the
effect certainly cannot hold against a strong
effect of the P treatment. Therefore, in pre-
treated soils, the role of silt should depend again
on the parent material inf luence, being an
‘‘intrinsic’’ soil property rather than a property
related to aggregation. In fact, we observed (data
not shown) that the NF subset for P samples
showed a significant prevalence of the litholo-
gies that are richer in silt (P G 0.01).
The composition of the cation exchange
complex played a secondary role in the pre-
diction of fractal behavior, with the presence of
exchangeable Ca or BS in the NP tree and in
both discriminant functions. Calcium was
always retained as a predicting variable for NP
samples, and the highest Ca contents are
associated to the NF subset. When considering
the properties of such NF samples, we observed
a high abundance of Ca-rich horizons from
Mollisols, that is, 7 of the 8 Mollisols samples
were NF. The major predictive role of Ca is
probably related to this high frequency.
Overall, the frequency of fractality in sam-
ples was slightly overestimated, except in the
discriminant analysis of the P data set. In the NP
data set, the same three samples were misclassi-
fied both by the discriminant analysis and the
classification tree. In contrast, in the P data set,
the misclassified samples were not the same for
the two statistical approaches. In general, the
misclassified samples were actually NF soils
classified as F (Table 3). When depicted in the
textural triangle, they appeared in the domain
defined as nonfractal by Tyler and Wheatcraft
(1992). Most of those soils showed high silt
content or a loamy texture. All F soils classified
as NF soils had instead high Ca contents, and
that in the study area are typically associated to
organic matter–rich NF topsoils.
Soil samples maintaining fractal behavior
both in P and NP displayed the highest ratio
VOL. 171 ~ NO. 4 FRACTAL BEHAVIOR IN PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS 291

Fig. 4. Prediction of variations in fractal behavior for different determination methods. In brackets, the number of
samples for each final branch. FF indicates always fractal; NFNF, always nonfractal; PYF, NPYNF, fractal when
pretreated but nonfractal when not pretreated; PYNF, NPYF, nonfractal when pretreated but fractal when
pretreated.

between the coarse sand contents determined
after and before pretreatment (Table 2), indicat-
ing scarce aggregation in the coarse sand class,
which resulted in a minor disgregation due to
pretreatment. These samples mostly came from
profiles evolving on sands. Aggregation was
more pronounced in soils always displaying
nonfractal behavior, as indicated by low coarse
sand index. These soils were typically developed
on clays or other fine-textured parent materials
that can undergo greater fragmentation when
the pretreatment is adopted. These relations
between fractal behavior and aggregation were
further confirmed by the higher values of
organic C and iron oxides contents in the
always NF soils than in the always F (Table 2).
CONCLUSIONS
The presence of fractal scaling in soil PSDs
for two different texture determination methods
(i.e., with or without pretreatment for organic
matter and iron oxides removal) could be
successfully predicted using classification trees
and discriminant analysis. The textural variables,
primarily silt content, had the major discrimi-
nant role. Properties related to the cation
exchange complex also had some inf luence on
the fractal behavior. Better results were obtained
with classification trees, which appeared to be a
more versatile tool for prediction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by SITAFspa
funding.
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