ALBERT

Beschreibung: Abstract Pore development in natural porous media, as a result of mineral dissolution in flowing fluid, generates complex microstructures. Although the underlying dynamics of fluid flow and the kinetics of the dissolution reactions have been carefully analyzed in many scenarios, it remains interesting to ask if the preferentially developed flow paths share certain general petrophysical properties. Here we combine in situ X‐ray imaging with network modeling to study pore development in chalk driven by acidic fluid flow under ambient condition. We show that the trajectory of a growing pore correlates with the flow path that minimizes cumulative surface—the overall surface area available to fluid within the residence time—calculated along streamlines. This correlation is not a coincidence because cumulative surface determines conversion of reactant and thus defines the position of dissolution front. Model simulations show that, as fluid channelizes, the growth of the leading pore in the flow direction is guided by migration of the most far‐reaching dissolution front, even in an ever‐changing flow field. In addition, we present a complete tomographic time series of microstructure erosion and show a good accord between the in situ observation and the model simulation. Our results suggest that the microscopic pore development is a deterministic process while being sensitive to stochastic perturbations to the migrating dissolution front.

Beschreibung: Abstract Earth System Models (ESMs) are essential tools for understanding and predicting global change, but they cannot explicitly resolve hillslope‐scale terrain structures that fundamentally organize water, energy, and biogeochemical stores and fluxes at subgrid scales. Here we bring together hydrologists, Critical Zone scientists, and ESM developers, to explore how hillslope structures may modulate ESM grid‐level water, energy, and biogeochemical fluxes. In contrast to the one‐dimensional (1‐D), 2‐ to 3‐m deep, and free‐draining soil hydrology in most ESM land models, we hypothesize that 3‐D, lateral ridge‐to‐valley flow through shallow and deep paths and insolation contrasts between sunny and shady slopes are the top two globally quantifiable organizers of water and energy (and vegetation) within an ESM grid cell. We hypothesize that these two processes are likely to impact ESM predictions where (and when) water and/or energy are limiting. We further hypothesize that, if implemented in ESM land models, these processes will increase simulated continental water storage and residence time, buffering terrestrial ecosystems against seasonal and interannual droughts. We explore efficient ways to capture these mechanisms in ESMs and identify critical knowledge gaps preventing us from scaling up hillslope to global processes. One such gap is our extremely limited knowledge of the subsurface, where water is stored (supporting vegetation) and released to stream baseflow (supporting aquatic ecosystems). We conclude with a set of organizing hypotheses and a call for global syntheses activities and model experiments to assess the impact of hillslope hydrology on global change predictions.

Beschreibung: Abstract Observatory‐scale data collection efforts allow unprecedented opportunities for integrative, multidisciplinary investigations in large, complex watersheds which can affect management decisions and policy. Through the National Science Foundation‐funded REACH (REsilience under Accelerated CHange) project, in collaboration with the Intensively Managed Landscapes‐Critical Zone Observatory, we have collected a series of multidisciplinary datasets throughout the Minnesota River Basin in south‐central Minnesota, USA, a 43,400 km2 tributary to the Upper Mississippi River. Post‐glacial incision within the Minnesota River valley created an erosional landscape highly responsive to hydrologic change, allowing for transdisciplinary research into the complex cascade of environmental changes that occur due to hydrology and land use alterations from intensive agricultural management and climate change. Datasets collected include water chemistry and biogeochemical data; geochemical fingerprinting of major sediment sources; high resolution monitoring of river bluff erosion; and repeat channel cross‐sectional and bathymetry data following major floods. The data collection efforts led to development of a series of integrative reduced complexity models that provide deeper insight into how water, sediment, and nutrients route and transform through a large channel network and respond to change. These models represent the culmination of efforts to integrate interdisciplinary datasets and science to gain new insights into watershed‐scale processes in order to advance management and decision making. The purpose of this paper is to present a synthesis of the data sets and models, disseminate them to the community for further research, and identify mechanisms used to expand the temporal and spatial extent of short‐term observatory‐scale data collection efforts.

Beschreibung: A meta-analysis data-driven approach is developed to represent the soil evaporative efficiency (SEE) defined as the ratio of actual to potential soil evaporation. The new model is tested across a bare soil database composed of more than 30 sites around the world, a clay fraction range of 0.02-0.56, a sand fraction range of 0.05-0.92, and about 30,000 acquisition times. SEE is modeled using a soil resistance ( r ss ) formulation based on surface soil moisture ( θ ) and two resistance parameters r ss,ref and θ efolding . The data-driven approach aims to express both parameters as a function of observable data including meteorological forcing, cut-off soil moisture value θ 1/2 at which SEE=0.5, and first derivative of SEE at θ 1/2 , named . An analytical relationship between ( r ss,ref ; θ efolding ) and ( θ 1/2 ; ) is first built by running a soil energy balance model for two extreme conditions with r ss = 0 and r ss ∼ ∞ using meteorological forcing solely, and by approaching the middle point from the two (wet and dry) references points. Two different methods are then investigated to estimate the pair ( θ 1/2 ; ) either from the time series of SEE and θ observations for a given site, or using the soil texture information for all sites. The first method is based on an algorithm specifically designed to accomodate for strongly nonlinear SEE( θ ) relationships and potentially large random deviations of observed SEE from the mean observed SEE( θ ). The second method parameterizes θ 1/2 as a multilinear regression of clay and sand percentages, and sets to a constant mean value for all sites. The new model significantly outperformed the evaporation modules of ISBA (Interaction Sol-Biosphére-Atmosphére), H-TESSEL (Hydrology-Tiled ECMWF Scheme for Surface Exchange over Land), and CLM (Community Land Model). It has potential for integration in various land-surface schemes, and real calibration capabilities using combined thermal and microwave remote sensing data. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Beschreibung: Groundwater discharge into a seepage lake was investigated by combining flux measurements, hydrochemical tracers, geological information and a telescopic modelling approach using first two-dimensional (2D) regional then 2D local flow and flow path models. Discharge measurements and hydrochemical tracers supplement each other. Discharge measurements yield flux estimates, but rarely provide information about the origin and flow path of the water. Hydrochemical tracers may reveal the origin and flow path of the water, but rarely provide any information about the flux. While aquifer interacting with the lake remained under seemingly steady state conditions across seasons, a high spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the discharge to the lake was observed. The results showed that part of the groundwater flowing from the west passes beneath the lake and discharges at the eastern shore, where groundwater springs and high discharge zones (HDZs) are observed at the lake bottom and at seepage faces adjacent to the lake. In the 2D cross-section, surface runoff from the seepage faces delivers 64% of the total groundwater inputs to the lake, and a 2 m wide offshore HDZ delivers 13%. Presence of HDZs may control nutrient fluxes to the lake. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Beschreibung: Research gaps in understanding flood changes at the catchment scale caused by changes in forest management, agricultural practices, artificial drainage and terracing are identified. Potential strategies in addressing these gaps are proposed, such as complex systems approaches to link processes across time scales, long-term experiments on physical-chemical-biological process interactions, and a focus on connectivity and patterns across spatial scales. It is suggested that these strategies will stimulate new research that coherently addresses the issues across hydrology, soil and agricultural sciences, forest engineering, forest ecology and geomorphology.

Beschreibung: Storm events dominate riverine loads of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nitrate, and are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in many regions due to climate change. We deployed three high-frequency (15-minute) in-situ absorbance spectrophotometers to monitor DOC and nitrate concentration for 126 storms in three watersheds with agricultural, urban, and forested land use/land cover. We examined intrastorm hysteresis and the influences of seasonality, antecedent conditions, storm size, and dominant land use/land cover on storm DOC and nitrate loads. DOC hysteresis was generally anti-clockwise at all sites, indicating distal and plentiful sources for all three streams despite varied DOC character and sources. Nitrate hysteresis was generally clockwise for urban and forested sites, but anti-clockwise for the agricultural site, indicating an exhaustible, proximal source of nitrate in the urban and forested sites, and more distal and plentiful sources of nitrate in the agricultural site. The agricultural site had significantly higher storm nitrate yield per water yield and higher storm DOC yield per water yield than the urban or forested sites. Seasonal effects were important for storm nitrate yield in all three watersheds and farm management practices likely caused complex interactions with seasonality at the agricultural site. Hysteresis indices did not improve predictions of storm nitrate yields at any site. We discuss key lessons from using high-frequency in-situ optical sensors.

Beschreibung: Many water resource systems have been designed assuming that the statistical characteristics of future inflows are similar to those of the historical record. This assumption is no longer valid due to large-scale changes in the global climate, potentially causing declines in water resource system performance, or even complete system failure. Upgrading system infrastructure to cope with climate change can require substantial financial outlay, so it might be preferable to optimize existing system performance when possible. This paper builds on decision scaling theory by proposing a bottom-up approach to designing optimal feedback control policies for a water system exposed to a changing climate. This approach not only describes optimal operational policies for a range of potential climatic changes, but also enables an assessment of a system's upper limit of its operational adaptive capacity, beyond which upgrades to infrastructure become unavoidable. The approach is illustrated using the Lake Como system in Northern Italy—a regulated system with a complex relationship between climate and system performance. By optimizing system operation under different hydrometeorological states, it is shown that the system can continue to meet its minimum performance requirements for more than three times as many states as it can under current operations. Importantly, a single management policy, no matter how robust, cannot fully utilize existing infrastructure as effectively as an ensemble of flexible management policies that are updated as the climate changes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Beschreibung: During the last decade, the widely distributed shrublands in northern China have shown significant signs of recovery from desertification, the result of widespread conservation practices. However, to support the current efforts in conservation, more knowledge is needed on surface energy partitioning and its biophysical controls. Using eddy-covariance measurements made over a semi-arid shrubland in northwest China in 2012, we examined how surface energy-balance components vary on diurnal and seasonal scales, and how biophysical factors control bulk surface parameters and energy exchange. Sensible heat flux ( H ) exceeded latent heat flux ( λE ) during most of the year, resulting in an annual Bowen ratio ( β , i.e. H / λE ) of 2.0. λE exceeded H only in mid-summer when frequent rainfall co-occurred with the seasonal peak in leaf area index ( LAI ). Evapotranspiration reached a daily maximum of 3.3 mm day −1 , and summed to 283 mm yr −1 . The evaporative fraction ( EF , i.e. λE / R n ), Priestley-Taylor coefficient ( α ), surface conductance ( g s ) and decoupling coefficient ( Ω ) were all positively correlated with soil water content ( SWC ) and LAI . The direct enhancement of λE by high vapor pressure deficit ( VPD ) was buffered by a concurrent suppression of g s . The g s played a direct role in controlling EF and α by mediating the effects of LAI , SWC and VPD . Our results highlight the importance of adaptive plant responses to water scarcity in regulating ecosystem energy partitioning, and suggest an important role for revegetation in the reversal of desertification in semi-arid areas. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.