In July 1994 the International Society of Soil Science held its 15th Congress in Acapulco, Mexico. Approximately 1800 ISSS members from almost 90 nations attended. The congress was held from Monday the 10th to Saturday 16th, the theme of this week was to discuss "Soil Utilisation in Harmony with Nature". Libby Roesner from the University of Sydney's Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science Department attended this conference with funding from the CRDC to present a paper on the new methods she is researching for using image analysis techniques to evaluate soil structure in vertisols. Her paper was entitled: "Measuring the Impact of Intensively Irrigated Cotton Production in Australia - Using New Methods of hnage Analysis to detect degradation of Soil Structure" and was co-authored by Tony Koppi and Alex McBratney. A copy of the extended summary of this paper is included at the end of this report. Two papers in the symposia "Soil physics and environmental protection" were found to be particularly relevant to Libby's research. These papers both used computers to conduct quantitative analysis of soil structure, they looked at improving image analysis techniques to make them more practical to the end users. This report will take the form of full summaries and discussion of these two papers and then brief summaries of other papers relevant to Libby's work. Also a list of the titles of some other symposia from the conference that may be relevant to other cotton researchers are included