Critical Zone

I came to know about the Critical Zone through the Critical Zone Observatories. Poor me ! So I was looking for its definition. And here it is

The Earth’s Critical Zone (CZ) is defined as "the heterogeneous, near surface environment in which complex interactions involving rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms regulate the natural habitat and determine the availability of life-sustaining resources [1]".

It is not difficult to understand that studying it will be one of the most intriguing topics of the next years. Well beyond the actual way ecohydrology has arrived.

From Quijano and Ling, I simply copy:

"The CZ is the result of complex interactions of physical, chemical, and biological processes that have taken place over an evolutionary time scale [2]. These interactions have been driven by energy, mass, entropy, and information fluxes, and the result is heterogeneous but organized structures that regulate the flow of energy down the gradients of various kinds [2,3]. "

Do not have very much to add right know (but studying it is one of the original motivation of GEOtop, at larger scales of JGrass-NewAGE). Thermodynamics plays a fundamental role in it - see also here, which makes it even more interesting to me).

References

Lin, H. Earth’s Critical Zone and hydropedology: Concepts, characteristics, and advances. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 2010, 14, 25–45.

Quijano, J., & Lin, H,. Entropy in the Critical Zone: A Comprehensive Review. Entropy, 16(6),  2014 , 3482–3536. doi:10.3390/e16063482

Rasmussen, C.; Troch, P.A.; Chorover, J.; Brooks, P.; Pelletier, J.; Huxman, T.E. An open system framework for integrating critical zone structure and function. Biogeochemistry 2011, 102, 15–29.

Mathematics for the Fluid Earth

"The fluid Earth is an excellent example of a forced, dissipative non-equilibrium system dominated by nonlinear processes and featuring multi-scale interactions, so that its understanding can be approached using the tools of dynamical systems theory and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. The understanding of the statistical properties of a system under consideration is crucial per se and in a variety of applications, especially when considering large fluctuations which may result into extreme events of relevant impact. The differential equations that describe mathematically the fluid components, in particular the Navier-Stokes equations and their many variants and reductions, are at the core of the work of any analyst working in nonlinear PDEs. The many fundamental questions still open are often precisely the questions at the heart of the link between analysts and geophysicists."

Hosted by the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences this is a series of video seminars of real interest for geoscientists. You can find it by clicking on Newton's image

Summer School on bio-geo-dynamics and Earth Sytem Sciences: The biophysical processes that shape the Earth

This School, the BESS,  has a long tradition that goes back to 1990 and was recently renewed.
I usually suggests to my students that participating is an important experience for their formation. The lecturers are very distinguished colleagues. The location (Venice and the Istituto Veneto) are fantastic. The topics are of general interest and, if not strictly covering hydrology, they are certainly useful to open the view of hydrologists who think that hydrology is a little more that fitting some data set but want to understand "how nature works".

The topics of this year were:

• Spatial and temporal controls of soil function by Bridget Emmet
• The thermodynamics of the Earth System by Axel Kleidon
• Linking pattern formation and spatial ecology by Ehud Meron
• Complex Dynamics of Forest Ecosystems at Different Scales: From 100 square meters to the Global Scale by Herman Shugart

Fortunately all the lectures are now available as streaming videos (not the slides of the lectures unfortunately) and can be viewed here.

Work of students is available instead here. Thanks to Marco Marani and Andrea Rinaldo for organising it, and thanks to the Istituto Veneto di Lettere Scienze ed Arti for making all the material available, and for supporting all of it.