Can someone show me pictures of soil before and after hugelkukture?

I started hugelbeds two years ago and the hardwood is still pretty much in tact.  I would like to see pictures of soil before hugelkulture beds were installed and after hugelkulture beds.  Does is really improve and build soil?  About how long did it take?

I've seen a good youtube video where some aussie tears apart some hugels that are differing years old. I want to say 1-5 but I don't remember. Very enlightening. I can't tell you what it was called though...

My year old hard wood looks like I could dig it up and burn it in my woodstove still....

Jan, welcome to the forum.

I am not sure I have ever seen pictures of the soil on a hugelkulture bed.

This thread was started in 2014 and has continued to be active since then so you might be able to see a comparison on that thread:

https://permies.com/t/giant-hugelkultur

I feel the improvement would be based on how the hugelkulture was made.  Was it just wood or did it have straw, compost, or wood chips added which would add to soil quality?

I have always been under the impression that the purpose of a hugelkulture was for water retention.

If you have not seen this thread it might be interesting:

https://permies.com/t/hugelkultur

I haven't done a hugelkultur with any extra large pieces of wood, but my first garden bed I started with a good 6" of ramial wood (green and brown branches and twigs nothing larger than an inch or two in diameter), covered with leaves and leaf mulch + compost. Everything except for 1 exceptionally large piece of wood that snuck in has been completely turned into soil in the last 2 years. It looks mostly like pure worm castings and leaf mulch.

I started hugelbeds two years ago and the hardwood is still pretty much in tact.  

Hi,
a big concern I had while considering hugelkultur was that it needs water. You want the soil moist so it can decompose the logs. The wood helps with retaining water (it acts like a sponge), and building berms helps retaining runoff water. However, a berm is not an ideal solution for a hot arid climate, since it heats and dries faster, especially if you aren't going to irrigate it, which is my case.
The solution I was pointed to, was to bury the logs underground, and build a normal bed over them. Hopefully the soil will retain moisture better and logs will decay as expected.
I built it last year, and it was filled with rainwater in May, but I suspect it dried out completely by August. I can't comment yet on the decay rate of the logs, but I can affirm that the soil has retained moisture much better than normal beds. I've heard that it takes 10 years for big logs to turn into mulch.
Logs also require a source of Nitrogen to decay, so it may have been for the good that they hadn't decompose that much.

As for the soil health, I think that's a different issue. For a good soil health you need to add aerobic compost (fungal dominated is best for most crops) or compost tea, to protect it with mulch (living mulch is better) and to disturb it the less you can, all these while you provide the right amount of sun, water and wind protection.
The buried logs will help to achieve a good moisture level, but if you miss the other ingredients then your soil may improve slowlier.