Managing the critical zone to obtain and sustain multiple benefits from working landscapes: The value of partnerships between LTAR and NSF CZO networks

Abstract:

The Critical Zone Observatories add value to earth system science and society by addressing research gaps to understand the critical zone, the surface skin of the earth that extends from the top of the tree canopy to the lower limits of the groundwater. The Critical Zone (CZ) sustains life on earth and provides food, shelter, forage, and fuel and other services to human well-being. This Zone is also where most of human activities take place and thus subject to change and degradation. Managing the critical zone to obtain and sustain these services will require initiatives, policies and incentives that maintain and enhance this zone.

The Critical Zone Observatories are seeking to address major gaps in understanding how earth surface evolves over time and how it will respond to future changes. Many of these gaps in our understanding occur at the interface between disciplines, across space and deep time scales, and multiple dimensions. For example, the Reynolds Creek CZO seeks to understand the role of soil environmental variables such as soil moisture and depth that vary across complex terrain in governing soil carbon storage and turnover in a semi-arid environment. For this reason, soil samples are being collected to depth of bedrock. Other networks and agencies such as the new LTAR and NEON are quantifying soil carbon at more shallow depths that will likely capture the variability in near surface soil carbon that is more sensitive to management and climate changes but may underestimate the total stores of carbon on the landscape. The CZOs also provide a platform to conduct interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary science by integrating across geological, soil, hydrologic, ecological, and social sciences to understand the critical zone. The emergence of the CZO Network and the LTAR network brings the opportunity to standardize methods and test hypotheses and ask questions across broad environmental conditions and gradients that could not be achieved with single principle investigator funding efforts. Partnerships such as these will increase the ability of the earth system science community to understand how to manage for the critical zone to sustain social, economic and environmental benefits derived from the CZ.