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Fall 2011 CUAHSI Cyberseminars present CZO research.
View the first draft of a video created by a UA Flandrau Science Center team. The video introduces the motivation and science involved in the National Critical Zone Observatory research program. Download video
Oral and poster presentations made at the May 2011 National CZO Program All Hands Meeting are posted in PDF form here >>
We focus on Critical Zone interactions that help drive models of carbon/water cycling, arid/semi-arid ecohydrology, and landscape evolution.
We are developing an interdisciplinary observatory in the southwestern US to improve our understanding of the function, structure and co-evolution of biota, soils, and landforms that comprise the Critical Zone (CZ). The observatory is designed as a natural laboratory for the earth science community to test hypotheses related to CZ function in relation to climatic and water cycle variation.
Our CZ Observatory (CZO) is designed to examine the impacts of space-time variability in energy and water flux on coupled CZ processes along two well-constrained climate gradients. The first is on rhyolitic parent material in the Jemez River Basin of northern New Mexico (JRB) and the second is on granite and schist bedrock within the Santa Catalina Mountains in southern Arizona (SCM). Measurement, modeling, and experimentation at sites that vary in parent rock, elevation, aspect, slope, soil development, and vegetation will enable quantification of the feedbacks between energy and mass fluxes (driven by chemical and physical gradients) and measured components of CZ structure.
Our CZO design is guided by the research question:
How does variability in climate and lithology influence CZ structure and function over both short (e.g., hydrologic event) and long (e.g., landscape evolution) time scales?
To identify the couplings among physical, chemical, and biological processes, our research integrates four crosscutting science themes: Ecohydrology and Hydrologic Partitioning, Subsurface Biogeochemistry, Landscape Evolution and Surface Water Dynamics.
Discoveries made at the JRB-SCM CZO will improve our ability to predict CZ response to changes in climate and land cover. We invite new investigators throughout the global earth sciences community to conduct novel and collaborative research at the JRB-SCM CZO.