Christina River Basin CZO: a whole watershed approach to integrating feedbacks between water, mineral and carbon fluxes in human landscapes

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This 1-year project represents a plan to complete the investments made in the Christina River Basin (CRB) Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) with NSF award 0724971. The overarching scientific objectives of the CRB-CZO were established in 2009 to test two related hypotheses: 1) Hydrological, chemical, and biological processes that produce and mix mineral surfaces and organic carbon are rate limiting to watershed scale chemical weathering, soil production, and carbon sequestration; and: 2) Humans accelerate rates of carbon-mineral mixing, resulting in anthropogenic carbon sequestration significant to local, regional, and global budgets. The extended CRB-CZO team examined these hypotheses within the 6th-order CRB watershed of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern Delaware with a suite of long-term studies organized into 4 inter-related objective areas: 1) Carbon-mineral-microbe-water interactions, 2) Co-evolution of critical zone structure, hydro-bio-geo-chemical function and carbon complexation, 3) Mobilization, transport & depositional controls on carbon-mineral supply, mixing, and burial, and 4) Saprolite to sea integration of erosion-driven carbon sequestration. CRB-CZO studies investigate scales varying from individual mineral grains to entire watersheds, and involve field, lab, and modeling approaches. This 1-year award will fund 14 investigators from 5 institutions to finalize ongoing research on these topics. In addition, the CRB-CZO team will also finalize installation of sensor stations in the streams draining study watersheds with different "endmember" land uses (forest, agriculture, and disturbed) as an investment in future studies. The research plan also outlines opportunities to pursue ongoing funding beyond the NSF CZO program. CRB-CZO research activities under this 1-year award will finalize training of approximately 8 PhD students and result in numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at scientific meetings. CRB-CZO will, to the extent possible, continue to communicate and coordinate with the national CZO network (including the national CZO office). Investigators will also organize a Christina River Basin Science and Management Symposium in the Fall of 2014. The Symposium will highlight CRB-CZO research to a variety of stakeholders, including the Christina Basin Water Quality Management Committee, which includes representatives from 15 federal, state, and local environmental resource agencies.