Reynolds Creek Carbon Critical Zone Observatory

雷诺兹溪碳临界区观测站

• 批准号: 1331872
• 负责人: Kathleen Lohse
• 金额: $ 250万
• 依托单位: Idaho State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-12-01 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1331872&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Reynolds; Creek; Carbon; Critical; Zone

Most of the world's terrestrial carbon is found in the Critical Zone as soil carbon. Indeed, soils store approximately three times more carbon than the atmosphere. Yet large uncertainties exist as to whether soils will release carbon to the atmosphere faster than they can take it up when disturbed or experiencing new environmental conditions or extremes. These uncertainties arise owing to an incomplete understanding of the processes controlling soil carbon fate and the challenge of scaling up estimates of soil carbon from the plot to the landscape or global level.Investigators are establishing the Reynolds Creek Critical Zone Observatory (RC CZO) to address the grand challenge of improving prediction of soil carbon storage and the processes governing its fate at the plot to the landscape scale. The RC CZO will be co-located with the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) in southwest Idaho, which has been administered by the United State Department of Agriculture -Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) for over 50 years. The RCEW is particularly well suited for the CZO because of its strong gradients in climate, vegetation, and distributions of soil organic and inorganic carbon. The observatory will leverage existing scientific infrastructure that includes long-term, spatially extensive meteorological and soil monitoring.An interdisciplinary team of scientists from Idaho State University, Boise State University, and the USDA-ARS will focus their initial efforts on extensive characterization of above and below ground plant biomass and soil carbon amounts and characteristics across the watershed. An intensively instrumented set of sites (CORE) along an elevation gradient will include measurements of evapotranspiration and the associated land-atmosphere exchange of carbon, sap flux, soil respiration, soil moisture, soil temperature, and other essential climate variables. Experimental research will include investigation of prescribed fire and grazing on soil carbon and processes. The CORE site data will support efforts to improve modeling of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system and provide a rich dataset for collaborations. A suite of simulation tools will be used to distribute controlling climate input variables at a sufficiently high resolution to capture the natural heterogeneity on the landscape and predict the distribution of soil carbon and other key ecological and hydrologic stores and fluxes throughout the watershed. This CZO will produce one of the largest coupled soil carbon- environmental variable datasets available. The dataset will provide a unique calibration target to develop and test modeling tools critical for regional and global climate and biogeochemical modeling. The intermediate scale research at the RC CZO will improve our ability to scale local observations to the landscape and the globe; an essential step to support accurate Earth system modeling. Evaluation of simulations at the intermediate scale will reveal areas of weakness in process representation and allow researchers to identify critical research needs. This CZO will become a community resource for carbon cycling research and education, and a magnet for global soil modeling community research to address the grand challenge of understanding soil carbon behavior. This observatory will also improve understanding of how land management activities like prescribed fire and grazing alter soil properties, carbon inputs and the fate of soil organic carbon at the landscape level. In additional to traditional training, this CZO will develop a field methods course on critical zone processes and develop K-12 curriculum to improve literacy of soils in the critical zone.

世界上大多数陆地碳都以土壤碳的形式存在于临界区。事实上，土壤储存的碳大约是大气的三倍。然而，当土壤受到干扰或经历新的环境条件或极端条件时，土壤向大气中释放碳的速度是否会超过吸收碳的速度，这一点存在很大的不确定性。这些不确定性的出现是由于控制土壤碳命运的过程的不完整的理解和扩大估计土壤碳从情节到景观或global level.Investigators的挑战正在建立雷诺兹溪临界区天文台（RC CZO），以解决改善预测土壤碳储量和过程中管理其命运的情节景观尺度的巨大挑战。RC CZO将与位于爱达荷州西南部的雷诺兹溪实验流域（RCEW）位于同一地点，该流域由美国农业部-农业研究局（USDA-ARS）管理已有50多年。RCEW特别适合CZO，因为它在气候，植被和土壤有机碳和无机碳分布方面具有很强的梯度。该观测站将利用现有的科学基础设施，包括长期的，空间上广泛的气象和土壤监测。一个跨学科的科学家团队，来自爱达荷州州立大学，博伊西州立大学，和USDA-ARS将集中他们的初步努力，在广泛的表征地上和地下植物生物量和土壤碳的数量和特征整个流域。沿着海拔梯度的一组密集仪器化的站点（CORE）将包括蒸散和相关的陆地-大气碳交换、汁液通量、土壤呼吸、土壤湿度、土壤温度和其他基本气候变量的测量。实验研究将包括调查规定的火灾和放牧对土壤碳和过程。CORE站点数据将支持改进土壤-植被-大气系统建模的努力，并为合作提供丰富的数据集。将使用一套模拟工具以足够高的分辨率分配控制气候输入变量，以捕捉景观的自然异质性，并预测整个流域土壤碳和其他关键生态和水文储存和通量的分布。该CZO将产生现有最大的土壤碳-环境变量耦合数据集之一。该数据集将提供一个独特的校准目标，以开发和测试对区域和全球气候和地球化学建模至关重要的建模工具。RC CZO的中尺度研究将提高我们将局部观测扩展到景观和地球仪的能力;这是支持精确地球系统建模的重要步骤。在中等规模的模拟评估将揭示在过程表示的薄弱环节，并允许研究人员确定关键的研究需求。这个CZO将成为碳循环研究和教育的社区资源，以及全球土壤建模社区研究的磁石，以应对理解土壤碳行为的巨大挑战。该观测站还将提高对土地管理活动（如规定的火灾和放牧）如何在景观层面改变土壤性质、碳输入和土壤有机碳命运的认识。 除了传统的培训外，该中心还将制定关于临界区进程的实地方法课程，并制定K-12课程，以提高对临界区土壤的认识。