The Challenges of Monitoring the Deep Critical Zone - Going Under the Living Skin of the Earth Surface
Abstract
A widely accepted definition of the Earth's critical zone: a near-surface zone where complex interactions among rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms modify weathering rates and form soil thus regulating fluxes through this highly dynamic compartment that is essential for terrestrial life. This living skin of the Earth provides numerous ecosystem services (from food to wood, water filtration, nutrient cycling) and regulatory functions (terrestrial carbon and water cycles) and is the domain with which humans interact most. The inherent feedbacks between hydrology, geology, geochemistry, biology and climatology make the study of this zone a frontier of interdisciplinary Earth sciences. A key step for advancing understanding and harnessing knowledge from different disciplines is to better monitor and understand key processes and transformations occurring in this domain. Present observational capabilities are limited in space and time and remain too fragmented (different disciplinary foci) to effectively address complexities of observing the deep critical zone. The scientific community needs a strategy to better link the highly dynamic shallow part of the critical zone with the relatively stable deep zone including long-term and reliable observations of key hydrological-chemical and biological processes. The presentation will highlight feedbacks among biology and hydrology that mediate and transform subsurface fluxes; the challenges of subsurface parameterization and observation methods, and discuss promising new observational methods for improved understanding of the deep critical zone.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B11M2231O
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0432 Contaminant and organic biogeochemistry;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0452 Instruments and techniques;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1813 Eco-hydrology;
- HYDROLOGY