An Introduction to Biogeochemistry of the Critical Zone

Wymore, Adam S.; Yang, Wendy H.; Silver, Whendee L.; McDowell, William H.; Chorover, Jon

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-95921-0_1

Cited by 1 publication

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“…River corridor scientists must embrace the tenets of critical zone science, specifically, that the geologic template and climate interact to determine structural and functional aspects of the CZ while incorporating time scales from seconds to millennia (Brantley et al, 2007). The river corridor uniquely integrates these elements of the CZ, allowing for testing of fundamental CZ concepts including the transporter-transformer hypothesis (Kumar et al, 2018;Fazekas et al, 2021;Arora et al, 2022;Wymore et al, 2022), the feed-through reactor concept (Anderson et al, 2007), and characterizing the CZ as on open system of energy and mass fluxes that vary over space and time (Rasmussen et al, 2011). Furthermore, groundwater and surface water in river corridors are a single resource (Winter et al, 1998), providing services that should be economically valued and managed accordingly (Buchs et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewing river corridors through the lens of critical zone science

et al. 2023

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River corridors integrate the active channels, geomorphic floodplain and riparian areas, and hyporheic zone while receiving inputs from the uplands and groundwater and exchanging mass and energy with the atmosphere. Here, we trace the development of the contemporary understanding of river corridors from the perspectives of geomorphology, hydrology, ecology, and biogeochemistry. We then summarize contemporary models of the river corridor along multiple axes including dimensions of space and time, disturbance regimes, connectivity, hydrochemical exchange flows, and legacy effects of humans. We explore how river corridor science can be advanced with a critical zone framework by moving beyond a primary focus on discharge-based controls toward multi-factor models that identify dominant processes and thresholds that make predictions that serve society. We then identify opportunities to investigate relationships between large-scale spatial gradients and local-scale processes, embrace that riverine processes are temporally variable and interacting, acknowledge that river corridor processes and services do not respect disciplinary boundaries and increasingly need integrated multidisciplinary investigations, and explicitly integrate humans and their management actions as part of the river corridor. We intend our review to stimulate cross-disciplinary research while recognizing that river corridors occupy a unique position on the Earth's surface.

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