Quantifying soil complexity using network models of soil porous structure

Abstract. This paper describes an investigation into the properties of spatially embedded complex networks representing the porous architecture of soil systems. We suggest an approach to quantify the complexity of soil pore structure based on the node-node link correlation properties of the networks. We show that the complexity depends on the strength of spatial embedding of the network and that this is related to the transition from a non-compact to compact phase of the network.