Hydrological Compartmentalization: A Grand Challenge in the Critical Zone

Abstract:

Current terrestrial biosphere models assume that plant transpiration, groundwater and streamflow are all sourced and mediated by the same well mixed soil reservoir. Recent stable water isotope data from Oregon and Mexico and now global meta-analysis and remote sensing measurements have all shown evidence of hydrological compartmentalization: a mobile compartment that forms groundwater and streamflow and a poorly mobile compartment that supplies plant transpiration. The way we now measure and model this poorly mobile water is a grand challenge for understanding subsurface mixing, water residence time, and its interaction and feedback to ecosystem processes. Here we review the latest results from this work and outline some of the future research challenges for understanding soil-plant-atmospheric interactions between the bedrock and the boundary layer.