Analysis of Micro-structure of Composited Soil with Feldspathic Sandstone and Sand Through the Scanning Electronic Microscope in Mu Us Sandy Land Region

The use of composited soil with feldspathic sandstone and sand in reclaiming arable land and ecological preservation-oriented construction provide new method towards the comprehensive consolidation in the Mu Us Sandy Land Region.However,few studies are devoted to the analysis towards reclamation mechanism and micro-structure of the composited soil.This paper contributes to use electronic microscope to retrieve microcosmic image of the aeolian sandy soil,feldspathic sandstone,composited soil and agricultural soil in order to identify their apparent differences.Three image processing software (ImageJ,Photoshop,Nano Measurer) were employed to quantitatively analyze the characterizations of the pore space,granular feature and aggregate composition in different soil.The results show:1)Composited soil with feldspathic sandstone and sand contains the properties of both feldspathic sandstone and sand in terms of micro-structure.2)The composited soil consists of 32% pore space,much higher than that of soft rock (23%).3)The proportion of 0~0.05mm soil particle in composited soil is 41%,compared to that of 3% in sandy soil,reflecting a much improvement in particle composition.4)Composited soil consists aggregation amounting to 6.67 in SEM images,which is lower than farmland,but higher than that of sand and enables the cultivation.5)Some slight disparities between composited soil and farmland soil can be found in terms of functional characteristics,reflecting in the lower productivity of composited soil compared to farmland.However,the composited soil has entered the trend of improvement.The new methods adopted in this paper enables to have a comprehensive understanding towards the micro-structure of the composited soil,facilitating soil management and efficient usage. © 2019, The Editorial Board of Journal of Basic Science and Engineering. All right reserved.