Sustainable agricultural production systems require well-structured soils and, thus, efficient methods for the assessment of soil structure are required. The objective of this study was to apply the methodology of visual quality of the soil structure in areas previously covered by Araucaria Forest and long-term use after deforestation. The following areas under three types of land use were selected: forest, pasture and farming, considered as treatments, from which ten samples were collected by each type of land use. In the collected samples, the visual quality of soil structure was carried out followed by statistical analysis, by means of analysis of variance and mean separation test. Significant differences in mean scores were found among the assessed areas. The soils under forest cover showed a mean Ve (visual score) = 1.68, statistically similar to the soil under pasture (mean Ve = 2.25) and lower than the farmed soils, (mean Ve = 2.40). Values of visual score obtained by visual assessment of the quality of soil structure were effective to identify differences among land use systems.
aggregationof soil; grassland; no-tillage; visualscore of soil
