soilphysics: An R package for simulation of soil compaction induced by agricultural field traffic

Agricultural traffic is the main mechanism responsible for the increase in compacted fields. Strategies to minimize the impact of field traffic on the soil includes knowledge of stress-strain relationships, which involve the use of soil compaction models; however, one of the challenges for dissemination of these models among researchers and academics is its availability as computational tools, easily and freely accessible. In this work, we present a computational tool for simulation of compaction induced by agricultural field traffic based on soil physical and soil mechanics principles, which includes the calculation of contact stress, stress propagation in the soil profile, simulation of bulk density variation in response to the applied stress and assessment of the risk of compaction through readily available soil properties and machinery parameters. Furthermore, the soil inputs of the model is facilitated by a set of pedo-transfer functions for estimation of the required soil properties. The model was computationally implemented as a set of R functions (R software), as well as on an interactive web page, named PredComp, both available in the R package soilphysics (available from https://arsilva87.github.io/soilphysics/ or http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/soilphysics/index.html).