A new method for the extraction of undisturbed soil samples for X-ray computed tomography

Can you imagine what happens underneath your feet when you walk across a meadow ? Can you describe how it looks like underground ? What is the structure of the soil, how do the plant roots disperse in the dark ? How is the water distributed within the pore system, which in turn determines matter transformation in soil ? All these questions might be answered when you use the potential of X-ray computed tomography to look into, visualize and quantitatively analyze the soil.For that purpose, you must have soil samples first, and not only one, but a statistically relevant large number of samples! You better have a machine for the non-destructive sampling of soil. Here, we describe the setup and the application of such a machine and show the first macro- and micro-CT scans which we achieved with this method.