Earthworm Bioturbation: Soil Mixing Cross-Section (2D)

Population & Conditions

Worm count 6

Activity speed 1.0×

Soil moisture 40%

Show burrow network

Live Readouts

Litter consumed

Cells burrowed

Mixing depth

0 cm

Elapsed time

0 d

Soil aeration0%

How it works

This is a companion build to the 3D "Worms Soil" terrarium, modelling the same real mechanism — earthworm bioturbation — with a different technique: instead of rendering continuous worm meshes in 3D, the soil column here is a cellular grid. Every cell tracks a material band (litter / topsoil / subsoil / clay) and an organic-content value.

Each worm is a flat 2D segment chain that burrows through the grid. Passing through a cell marks it as an open burrow and blends a fraction of its organic content toward the worm's own organic load — which the worm builds up by foraging leaf litter at the surface and carries downward, exactly how real earthworms translocate organic matter from the litter layer into deeper soil.

Soil aeration is measured directly from the grid: the share of below-surface cells that have ever been opened into a burrow.
Mixing depth is the deepest row where organic content has been pushed above a threshold — a direct proxy for how far bioturbation has reached.
Moisture raises how often worms surface to forage and how fast they move, matching real earthworm behaviour (moist soil = more surface activity); a rain event spikes moisture and briefly pulls the whole population upward.
Burrows left unused slowly re-close (soil creep collapses abandoned macropores) unless kept open by continued traffic — so aeration reflects present activity, not just history.

grid-based cross-section · not to scale

Leaf litter Topsoil Subsoil Clay hardpan Open burrow