Understanding the Critical Zone: A Network for Earth Science Research

1. Introduction and CZEN Overview July 16, 2008, Penn State www.czen.org Goldschmidt Meeting, Vancouver

2. Anderson et al., 2004 The Critical Zone = the zone extending from the outer vegetation envelope to the lower limit of groundwater

3. Human population through historical time . . . Slide from Mike Hochella, Univ of Delaware meeting

4. Slide from Mike Hochella, Univ of Delaware meeting

5. ~2 times geologic rate geologic rate Historical Rates of Earth Moved From Hooke, R. LeB., 2000, Geology, Vol. 28, No. 9. "the bottom line is, we move about 10 times as much sediment as all natural processes put together," –Bruce Wilkinson, U. Michigan, Nov. 2004, GSA Meeting Slide from Mike Hochella, Univ of Delaware meeting

6. The Four Driving Questions Nutrients What processes control fluxes of carbon, particulates, and reactive gases over different timescales? How do processes that nourish ecosystems change over human and geologic time scales? Landform Evolution Atmosphere How do biogeochemical processes govern long-term sustainability of water and soil resources? How do variations in and perturbation to chemical and physical weathering processes impact the Critical Zone? Chemistry of Water

7. To answer these questions requires scientists who can cross disciplines and also think across timescales that vary from seconds to tens of millions of years

8. How can we quantitatively predict (earthcast) the response of the earth surface to natural and human perturbation?To do this, we need… • new techniques to measure the controlling variables at the relevant scales of time and space • comprehensive, long-term, and systematic observations of the key variables needed to earthcast • measurement of the thermodynamic and kinetic data necessary to predict the fluxes of matter and energy occurring at interfaces between reservoirs with very different dynamics • development of conceptual models • development of a complete set of governing equations for surface processes • improvements in modeling of dynamical complexities and emergent phenomena

9. NSF BIO EAR Fundamental Critical Zone Science The U.S. funding perspective DOE USDA NASA EPA

10. Partial History: WSSC and CZEN • Workshop with 20 participants (Baltimore, October 2003) • WSSC website (http://www.wssc.psu.edu/) • Open meeting at AGU (Dec. 2003) • Anderson et al. (2004) published in EOS • Goldschmidt conf., Copenhagen, open meeting (2004) • Open meeting at WRI-11, Saratoga Springs (June 2004) • WSSC European science meeting (England, Oct. 2004) • WSSC UK scientists meeting (October 2004) • 2005 Goldschmidt conference: Earth’s Weathering Engine • 2nd WSSC Workshop, January 2005, at NSF, WSSC renamed as CZEN • Univ of Delaware Frontiers of Crit Zone meeting, 2006 • Data and Date Structures Meeting at Penn State, 2007

11. Workshop report from the Univ of Delaware meeting Download from www.czen.org Pick up a copy at the EarthChem-CZEN-ChemxSeer booth

12. The Tool that this Community Needs • A network of observatories (Critical Zone Exploration Network, CZEN) that all Critical Zone scientists could work on together • CZEN would be open for investigation using all chemical or physical or hydrological or ecological or molecular biological or geological (etc.) techniques

13. Critical Zone Exploration Network Topography Climate Lithology Time Biology Disturbance

14. Why a network? • Network can explore one environmental variable while keeping other variables constant • Network allows comparison of the same data measured in the same way at multiple sites • Network allows understanding of broad patterns of behavior • Network can create community among scientists and generate interdisciplinary understanding

15. Hawaii Critical Zone Network Peter Vitousek and Oliver Chadwick have spearheaded both chronosequences and climosequences in Hawaii that have drawn many scientists to investigate the Hawaiian CZ

16. CZEN Seed Sites funded in 2006

17. NSF announced a competition for Critical Zone Observatories in 2006 ($8m new money) • Largely in response to exciting new surface Earth sciences • In partial response to the NRC BROES report that highlighted the Critical Zone • In partial response to community pressure from CUAHSI, WSSC, CZEN, NCED, many others • In partial response to proposal pressure Earth surface scientists • Run jointly by Geomorphology, Geobiology and Low T Geochemistry, and Hydrology programs

18. Critical Zone Observatories • Sierra Nevada Transect (Roger Bales) • Boulder Creek (Suzanne Anderson) • Susquehanna Shale Hills (Chris Duffy)

19. SSHO: Shale Transect SSHO Investigators Transect Investigators Chris Duffy Sue Brantley Rudy Slingerland David Eissenstat Ken Davis Karen Salvage Kamni Singha Laura Toran Pat Reed Eric Kirby Tim White Kevin Dressler Doug Miller Ray Fletcher Michelle Tuttle Paul Bierman Peter Lichtner Carl Steefel

20. CZEN International Sites • BigLink, Switzerland • Guadeloupe, France • Strengbach, France

21. Criteria to become a CZEN site • Data available for water and soils down to bedrock • Willingness to share data • Willingness to open the site to other investigators • Interest in answering questions that can only be answered with a network of sites

22. For a given lithology, can we use the climate and the soil residence time or exposure time to predict • ….the thickness of regolith on the landscape? • …the profiles of elements and minerals as a function of depth to bedrock?

23. What controls the depth and chemistry of the Earth’s regolith?

24. To answer such questions across a network requires shared data • We have a great variety of data types that vary with space and time • We need to have some measurements that are made at all sites = core data • We will have some measurements that are more specialized and that will not be made at all sites = specialized data

25. CZEN has drafted an ontology that describes the structure of the data, and it has been posted for comments http://www.czen.org/content/critical-zone-ontology http://www.czen.org

28. Table 1. Minimum Information to be Submitted from CZEN Sites Site information (as available): Digital topography (and derived information such as slope and curvature); Digital geology; Digital soil; Landform type; Landform position, Parent material type (e.g., alluvial, bedrock), Latitude, Longitude, Description of drainage characteristics, Slope, Aspect, Land use description, Elevation, Geology. Meteorological characteristics: Daily, monthly and mean annual temperature, precipitation, and potential evapotranspiration. Regolith characterization: Bedrock chemistry and mineralogy; Soil and saprolite bulk density, Soil chemistry (as function of depth to bedrock), Soil mineralogy (as function of depth to bedrock), Loss on ignition (if applicable), Soil profile description, Landform age or soil production rates, Depth to bedrock, Analysis company (if applicable for chemical analysis); Analysis technique (for chemistry and mineralogy); Date of analysis; Sample preparation (size separation, drying, ashed or unashed); Grain size analyzed

29. Data Infrastructure for CZ Science • The three CZOs must share data after a two year embargo period • Only moderate funding was included in each CZO proposal to place data onto the web • The SSHO CZO is discussing placing data onto the web using ChemxSeer, but ultimately storing it with EarthChem (CZ.db …with Kerstin Lehnert, Columbia U.) • As the CZ data infrastructure for CZO grows, we should augment this CZO data with data from other sites and legacy data, as well as kinetic and thermodynamic data

30. Kinetic Data Synthesis by Center for Environmental Kinetics Analysis (CEKA) Kaolinite Datasets compiled and placed online (search for ChemxSeer): silicate mineral dissolution rate constants; chemistry of soils where available from surface to bedrock with exposure age Published soil profile data CEKA was funded by the National Science Foundation and Dept of Energy as an Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute

31. C. Lee Giles, Levent Bolelli, Xiaonan Lu, Ying Liu, Anuj Jaiswal, Kun Bai, Bingjun Sun, Isaac Councill, Prasenjit Mitra, James Z. Wang, Karl Mueller, James Kubicki, Barbara Garrison, Joel Bandstra, Qingzhao Tan, Juan Pablo Ramirez Fernandez Chemistry, Geosciences, Information Sciences and Technology Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA PI: Karl Mueller, Funded by NSF http://chemxseer.ist.psu.edu

32. Data Search Example in ChemXSeer Search document content and metadata

33. Table Search Interface in ChemxSeer Searches tables with specific properties Extracts the data from the table automatically for user decision-making

34. ChemXSeer Data Extraction from Figures • Numerical data in • scientific publications • are often found in figures. • Tools that automate the data extraction from figures provide the following: • Increases our understanding of key concepts of papers • Eases the process of comparative analyses. • Enables regeneration of figures in different contexts. • Enables search for documents with figures containing specific experiment results. X. Lu, et.al, JCDL 2006.

35. What kind of cyberinfrastructure might we want? • Cyberinfrastructure that promotes use of datasets by domain scientists • Cyberinfrastructure that promotes use of reactive transport models (eg Flotran, Crunch, Witch, Min3) • Cyberinfrastructure that will invite domain scientists to share data and make it accessible • Cyberinfrastructure that will facilitate both private and public datasets • Cyberinfrastructure that is enabled by funding agencies, professional societies, publishing houses, and individual scientists • Cyberinfrastructure that brings communities together, more predictive capability, and a stronger voice

36. How can a cyberinfrastructure be inviting to domain scientists? • The site will be the “go to” place to make comparisons across data sets • The site will make it easy for domain scientists to compare their data with other data • The site will allow domain scientists to keep their own data private until released after an embargo period • The site will make it easy for scientists to cite authors of the data • The site will have rudimentary tools to work on visualizing or fitting data • The site will make it easy for nonspecialists or scientists from other fields to find and use data (interoperability) • The site will promote “discussion” between other portals or other cyberinfrastructures

37. Fundamental Critical Zone Science ChemxSeer (cybertools for chemistry) EarthChem (databases) CZEN.org (social networking, data management) CZEN (field sites)

38. CZEN is a network of • Sites (network of field sites) • Ideas (network of model development) • Tools (network of tools tested on sites and cybertools for using data) • People (network of international scientists and students)

39. www.czen.org • Social networking site for Critical Zone scientists • Content management system • 566 registered users • Growing at a rate of about 4/day • 500 pages • 33 groups including international groups • 14 post types are available • Biggest problem: teaching geochemists how to use a content management system!

40. CZEN International Student Scholars—received NSF funding to work in Europe in 2006/07 •Claire Hoff, U. of New Hampshire, Calcium leaching dynamics, Hasselt University, Belgium •Heather Buss, USGS Postdoctoral Fellow, Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico. •Heidi Albrecht, Penn State U., Frasassi Cave, Italy. •Julie Pett-Ridge, Cornell U., Oxford U., UK •Mark Waldrop, USGS Postdoctoral Fellow, Lancaster U., England. •Sarah Hayes, U. of Arizona, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. •Simon Mudd, Vanderbilt U., Oxford U., UK •Susan Crow, Purdue U., Queen’s University, Belfast, Ireland. •Susan Riggins, U. of Colorado-Boulder, British Geological Survey. Current ongoing competition for students to receive funded to attend the SoilCritZone meeting in Crete in Sept 2008

41. NSF BIO EAR Fundamental Critical Zone Science The U.S. funding perspective DOE USDA NASA EPA If CZ scientists build the science…the funding will come

42. Anderson et al., 2004 The problem is not just crossing disciplines but also crossing timescales from seconds to millenia…earth scientists must continue to emphasize the time component so that we can earthcast the surface earth system