Browsing by Subject "CATCHMENT"

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    Designing a network of critical zone observatories to explore the living skin of the terrestrial Earth
    (Earth Surface Dynamics, 2017-12-18) Brantley, SL; McDowell, WH; Dietrich, WE; White, TS; Kumar, P; Anderson, SP; Chorover, J; Ann Lohse, K; Bales, RC; Richter, DD; Grant, G; Gaillardet, J
    The critical zone (CZ), the dynamic living skin of the Earth, extends from the top of the vegetative canopy through the soil and down to fresh bedrock and the bottom of the groundwater. All humans live in and depend on the CZ. This zone has three co-evolving surfaces: the top of the vegetative canopy, the ground surface, and a deep subsurface below which Earth's materials are unweathered. The network of nine CZ observatories supported by the US National Science Foundation has made advances in three broad areas of CZ research relating to the co-evolving surfaces. First, monitoring has revealed how natural and anthropogenic inputs at the vegetation canopy and ground surface cause subsurface responses in water, regolith structure, minerals, and biotic activity to considerable depths. This response, in turn, impacts aboveground biota and climate. Second, drilling and geophysical imaging now reveal how the deep subsurface of the CZ varies across landscapes, which in turn influences aboveground ecosystems. Third, several new mechanistic models now provide quantitative predictions of the spatial structure of the subsurface of the CZ.
    Many countries fund critical zone observatories (CZOs) to measure the fluxes of solutes, water, energy, gases, and sediments in the CZ and some relate these observations to the histories of those fluxes recorded in landforms, biota, soils, sediments, and rocks. Each US observatory has succeeded in (i) synthesizing research across disciplines into convergent approaches; (ii) providing long-term measurements to compare across sites; (iii) testing and developing models; (iv) collecting and measuring baseline data for comparison to catastrophic events; (v) stimulating new process-based hypotheses; (vi) catalyzing development of new techniques and instrumentation; (vii) informing the public about the CZ; (viii) mentoring students and teaching about emerging multidisciplinary CZ science; and (ix) discovering new insights about the CZ. Many of these activities can only be accomplished with observatories. Here we review the CZO enterprise in the United States and identify how such observatories could operate in the future as a network designed to generate critical scientific insights. Specifically, we recognize the need for the network to study network-level questions, expand the environments under investigation, accommodate both hypothesis testing and monitoring, and involve more stakeholders. We propose a driving question for future CZ science and a hubs-and-campaigns model to address that question and target the CZ as one unit. Only with such integrative efforts will we learn to steward the life-sustaining critical zone now and into the future.
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    Topographic variability and the influence of soil erosion on the carbon cycle
    (Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2016-05-01) Dialynas, YG; Bastola, S; Bras, RL; Billings, SA; Markewitz, D; Richter, DDB
    ©2016. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Soil erosion, particularly that caused by agriculture, is closely linked to the global carbon (C) cycle. There is a wide range of contrasting global estimates of how erosion alters soil-atmosphere C exchange. This can be partly attributed to limited understanding of how geomorphology, topography, and management practices affect erosion and oxidation of soil organic C (SOC). This work presents a physically based approach that stresses the heterogeneity at fine spatial scales of SOC erosion, SOC burial, and associated soil-atmosphere C fluxes. The Holcombe's Branch watershed, part of the Calhoun Critical Zone Observatory in South Carolina, USA, is the case study used. The site has experienced some of the most serious agricultural soil erosion in North America. We use SOC content measurements from contrasting soil profiles and estimates of SOC oxidation rates at multiple soil depths. The methodology was implemented in the tRIBS-ECO (Triangulated Irregular Network-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator-Erosion and Carbon Oxidation), a spatially and depth-explicit model of SOC dynamics built within an existing coupled physically based hydro-geomorphic model. According to observations from multiple soil profiles, about 32% of the original SOC content has been eroded in the study area. The results indicate that C erosion and its replacement exhibit significant topographic variation at relatively small scales (tens of meters). The episodic representation of SOC erosion reproduces the history of SOC erosion better than models that use an assumption of constant erosion in space and time. The net atmospheric C exchange at the study site is estimated to range from a maximum source of 14.5 g m−2 yr−1 to a maximum sink of −18.2 g m−2 yr−1. The small-scale complexity of C erosion and burial driven by topography exerts a strong control on the landscape's capacity to serve as a C source or a sink.