Assessment of an automated method for determining particulate organic carbon in soil

摘要

A manual and an automated method of sieving soil to collect a particulate organic carbon (POC) fractions were compared. The manual method is potentially subject to operator influence whereas the automated method is not. Results revealed that the amount of carbon captured in the POC fraction was larger for the automated than manual method across the five soils examined. However, the magnitude of the difference in POC as determined by the two methods varied significantly with soil type. Variation between the results obtained by different operators were also higher for the manual than automated method. The automated methodology for sieving therefore provides more consistent data across operators but also gave higher POC values.