Hydrological partitioning in the critical zone: Recent advances and opportunities for developing transferable understanding of water cycle dynamics

Paul D. Brooks, Jon Chorover, Ying Fan, Sarah E. Godsey, Reed M. Maxwell, James P. McNamara, Christina Tague

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

212 Scopus citations

Abstract

Hydrology is an integrative discipline linking the broad array of water-related research with physical, ecological, and social sciences. The increasing breadth of hydrological research, often where subdisciplines of hydrology partner with related sciences, reflects the central importance of water to environmental science, while highlighting the fractured nature of the discipline itself. This lack of coordination among hydrologic subdisciplines has hindered the development of hydrologic theory and integrated models capable of predicting hydrologic partitioning across time and space. The recent development of the concept of the critical zone (CZ), an open system extending from the top of the canopy to the base of groundwater, brings together multiple hydrological subdisciplines with related physical and ecological sciences. Observations obtained by CZ researchers provide a diverse range of complementary process and structural data to evaluate both conceptual and numerical models. Consequently, a cross-site focus on "critical zone hydrology" has potential to advance the discipline of hydrology and to facilitate the transition of CZ observatories into a research network with immediate societal relevance. Here we review recent work in catchment hydrology and hydrochemistry, hydrogeology, and ecohydrology that highlights a common knowledge gap in how precipitation is partitioned in the critical zone: "how is the amount, routing, and residence time of water in the subsurface related to the biogeophysical structure of the CZ?" Addressing this question will require coordination among hydrologic subdisciplines and interfacing sciences, and catalyze rapid progress in understanding current CZ structure and predicting how climate and land cover changes will affect hydrologic partitioning.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)6973-6987
Number of pages15
JournalWater Resources Research
Volume51
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2015
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Water Science and Technology

Keywords

  • critical zone
  • ecohydrology
  • geohydrology
  • hydrochemistry

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Hydrological partitioning in the critical zone: Recent advances and opportunities for developing transferable understanding of water cycle dynamics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this