Network Cluster: Patterns and controls of ecohydrology, CO2 fluxes, and nutrient availability in pedogenic carbonate-dominated dryland critical zones

网络集群：成土碳酸盐主导的旱地关键区域的生态水文学、二氧化碳通量和养分可用性的模式和控制

• 批准号: 2012475
• 负责人: Lixin Jin
• 金额: $ 526.93万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at El Paso
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2012475&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Network; Cluster; Patterns; controls; ecohydrology

The Critical Zone is the layer of Earth’s surface from the top of the trees to the bottom of the groundwater. Rocks, soil, water, air, and living organisms interact in the Critical Zone to provide life-sustaining resources such as food and water. Drylands, with arid to semi-arid climates, cover 45% of the Earth and provide homes to more than 2 billion people. The drylands of the American West are facing significant challenges caused by global change, such as drought and changing plant communities. Increases in human population and food demand have also converted many natural drylands in this region to irrigated farms. These changes in land use and climate have greatly affected the movement of water, carbon, nutrients and salt through different parts of the drylands. All of these changes impact the sustainability of natural and agricultural ecosystems. This project will investigate these important Critical Zone processes and improve our ability to predict future change. Specifically, this thematic cluster will investigate how carbonate minerals in dryland soils control and impact water, nutrients, salts, and carbon moving in and out of the Critical Zone. This project will help to educate and train middle to high school students, and college undergraduate and graduate students. These students will be provided with the motivation, skills and tools to become future professionals in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). Our research and education efforts will also help to grow public awareness of the importance of the Critical Zone function and service in drylands.The Critical Zone in dryland ecosystems is an understudied but crucial part of the Earth system. It contrasts with mesic areas by having sparse vegetation, limited but dynamic soil moisture, deep water table, low soil organic matter, alkaline pH, and buildup of salt precipitates, especially as pedogenic carbonates that can develop into a thick caliche layer and dominate the soil structure. However, these systems are underrepresented in Critical Zone research and current conceptual models do not fully address phenomena unique to drylands such as development of pedogenic carbonate, dust storms, episodic precipitation, and high spatiotemporal variability in hydrological and biogeochemical processes. To fill these knowledge gaps, the overarching goal of the project is to increase our capacity to quantify and predict dryland carbon budgets across land-use and climatic gradients by examining the role of water and nutrient availability in regulating the movement of organic and inorganic carbon in the dryland Critical Zone. Specifically, this project centers around the multifaceted roles of pedogenic carbonates in dictating vadose zone water dynamics, the potential recharge to deep water table, and nutrient cycling in typical dryland landscapes, piedmont, playa and irrigated agricultural fields. These in turn drive trends in evolution of Critical Zone architectures and land-atmosphere C exchange. We will tackle these problems by using a comprehensive set of tools including eddy covariance towers, deep Critical Zone drilling, hydrogeophysical surveys, soil and hydrologic sensors, isotopic analysis, synchrotron, geochemical proxies, and genetic sequencing. This project builds on the rich historical data, knowledge, and models at the Jornada LTER, the Reynolds Creek CZO, USDA-ARS Kimberly site in Idaho and irrigated agricultural sites along the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. This thematic cluster will develop an interdisciplinary framework to understand material and energy flow through dryland Critical Zones and lay the foundation for managing Critical Zone function, evolution, and services, as well as forecasting carbon budget changes with future shifts in climate and land use in drylands.This project is jointly funded by the Critical Zone Collaborative Network and the Hydrologic Sciences programs in the Division of Earth Sciences and the Hispanic Serving Institutions program in the Education and Human Resources Directorate's Division of Human Resource Development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

临界区是从树木顶部到地下水底部的地球表面层，岩石、土壤、水、空气和生物在临界区相互作用，提供食物和水等维持生命的资源。干旱至半干旱气候的旱地覆盖了地球的 45%，为超过 20 亿人提供了家园 美国西部的旱地正面临着干旱和植物群落变化等全球变化带来的重大挑战。在人口和粮食需求也使该地区的许多自然旱地转变为灌溉农场，这些土地利用和气候的变化极大地影响了水、碳、养分和盐在旱地不同部分的流动。该项目将研究这些重要的关键区域过程，并提高我们预测未来变化的能力。具体而言，该主题组将研究旱地土壤中的碳酸盐矿物如何控制和影响水、养分、盐和碳。进出关键区。该项目将帮助教育和培训中学生、大学本科生和研究生，为这些学生提供成为未来科学、技术、工程、艺术和领域专业人士的动力、技能和工具。我们的研究和教育工作也将有助于提高公众对旱地关键区功能和服务重要性的认识。旱地生态系统中的关键区是地球系统中一个未被充分研究但至关重要的部分。通过稀疏的医疗区域植被、有限但动态的土壤湿度、深地下水位、低土壤有机质、碱性 pH 值和盐沉淀物的积累，特别是成土碳酸盐，可以发展成厚的钙质层并主导土壤结构。然而，这些系统的代表性不足。关键区域研究和当前的概念模型并没有完全解决旱地特有的现象，例如成土碳酸盐的发展、沙尘暴、阵发性降水以及水文和生物地球化学过程的高时空变异性。为了填补这些知识空白，该项目的首要目标是通过研究水和养分可用性在调节有机和无机碳移动中的作用，提高我们量化和预测跨土地利用和气候梯度的旱地碳预算的能力。具体而言，该项目围绕成土碳酸盐在决定渗流带水动态、深地下水位的潜在补给以及典型旱地景观、山麓、这些反过来又推动了关键区架构和陆地-大气碳交换的发展趋势，我们将通过使用一套全面的工具来解决这些问题，包括涡流协方差塔、深关键区钻探、水文地球物理调查、土壤。该项目建立在雷诺兹河 Jornada LTER 丰富的历史数据、知识和模型之上。 CZO、美国农业部-ARS 爱达荷州金伯利场地和德克萨斯州里奥格兰德河谷沿线的灌溉农业场地将开发一个跨学科框架，以了解旱地关键区域的物质和能量流动，并为管理关键区域的功能和演变奠定基础。和服务，以及预测碳预算随未来气候和旱地土地利用变化的变化。该项目由关键区域合作网络以及地球科学和西班牙裔部门的水文科学项目共同资助教育和人力资源理事会人力资源开发部门的服务机构计划。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。