Particle Extraction and Quantitative Analysis of Soil Microstructure from SEM Using Spatial Analyst Tools in ArcGIS

scanning electron microscope has been widely used to research the microstructure of clayey soil. From the gray-scale image (SEM), much useful information can be extracted for quantitative analysis of clayey soil microstructure. Traditional image processing software can not satisfy all the requirements for quantitative analysis. Some useful spatial analysis tools that originally designed for macro terrain analysis in ArcGIS were introduced in this paper to extract particles, boundaries of particles .A clayey soil SEM from Ningming city, Guangxi province in China was used as example to illustrate mentioned operation and proved to be convenient and effective.