Аннотация:The steppe zone of European Russia has an extension from West to East of almost 5 thousand km and from North to South of more than 1.2 thousand km and it is nearly all under cultivation. One of the widespread soil degradation processes in the steppe zone is soil compaction. Globally, about 68 million hectares of arable land are compacted. In Russia, about 10% of the area of arable land affected by compaction are slightly compacted, 50% - moderately, and 40% — strongly compacted. In the literature the agrochemical and economic effects of the compaction were estimated as the decrease in the efficiency of fertilizer (more than 40%), yield reduction (25-50%) and rising fuel costs by 15%. Based on the study of the composition and structure of various aggregates of agrogenic soils of the southern part of the steppe zone of European Russia, it was shown that the multiscale studies (from macro to micro-level) allowed detecting that compaction could be promoted by different characteristic soil features: natric properties, vertic properties, mechanical (agro-)compaction. At the first stage we made joint tomographic and micromorphological analises of aggregates d=1-2 mm and d=3-5 mm from compacted horizons of different soils. We identified additional diagnostic features of natric properties such as low porosity of aggregates visible in the tomograms and infilling of a substantial part of the pores with illuvited substance. Vertic properties included large number interaggregate thin pores visible in the tomograms and low amounts of humus-clayey s-matrix in the intrapedal zone. We showed that a combination of topographic and micromorphological methods is prospective in studying of compacted horizons of arable soils.