Evaluating the Integral Suspension Pressure method for measuring the particle size distribution in soils with high organic matter content

Typical information in soil databases is the soil texture and particle size distribution. These properties are used for soil description or predicting other soil properties such as bulk density or hydraulic conductivity. Measuring particle size distribution with standards methods such as the pipette or hydrometer is time-consuming because of the sample pre-treatment used to remove organic matter or iron and the sample post-treatment. Nowadays, there are new methodologies for determining soil particle size distribution, such as the Integral Suspension Pressure (ISP) method, which measures the silt content in a semi-automatized process. Thus, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the suitability of the ISP method compared to standard techniques used in soil analysis and evaluate the effect of organic matter content in the ISP measurements. The main results showed that the ISP method is equivalent in accuracy to the pipette, especially for soils rich in silt or sand content. Also, the results demonstrate the convenience of removing the soil organic matter when using the ISP for soils with more than 1.5% organic matter.