mountain belts and sedimentary basins, active fault networks, volcanoes,
groundwater reservoirs, and soil systems. Research at all of these scales has been
accelerated by a combination of conceptual advances and across-the-board
improvements in observational capabilities and information technologies. The
committee has identified six specific areas, organized here by proximity and
scale, in which the opportunities for basic research are especially compelling:
1. Integrative studies of the “Critical Zone” the heterogeneous, nearsurface 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. Many science
disciplines—hydrology, geomorphology, biology, ecology, soil
science, sedimentology, materials research, and geochemistry—are
bringing novel research tools to bear on the study of the Critical Zone
as an integrated system of interacting components and processes.
During the next decade, basic research will be able to address a wide
spectrum of interconnected problems that bear directly on societal
interests:
• terrestrial carbon cycle and its relationship to global climate change,
including the temporal and spatial variability of carbon sources and
sinks and the influence of weathering reactions,
• quantification of microbial interactions in mineral weathering, soil
formation, the accumulation of natural resources, and the
mobilization of nutrients and toxins,
• dynamics of the land-ocean interface, which governs how coastal
ocean processes such as tides, waves, and currents interact with river
drainage, groundwater flow, and sediment flux,
• coupling of the tectonic and atmospheric processes through
volcanism, precipitation, fluvial processes, glacier development, and
erosion, which regulate surface topography and influence climate on
geological time scales, and
• formation of a geological record that encodes a four-billion-year
history of Critical-Zone processes, including environmental
variations caused by major volcanic episodes, meteorite impacts, and
other extreme events.
2. Geobiology, the study of how life interacts with the Earth and how it
has changed through geological time. By combining the powerful
tools of genomics, proteinomics, and developmental biology with new
techniques from geochemistry, mineralogy, stratigraphy, and
paleontology, geobiologists are now better equipped to investigate a
variety of fundamental problems:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2
About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the
original work has been recomposed from XML files created
from the original paper book, not from the original
typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths,
word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific
formatting, however, cannot be retained,
and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted.
Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative
version for attribution.
groundwater reservoirs, and soil systems. Research at all of these scales has been
accelerated by a combination of conceptual advances and across-the-board
improvements in observational capabilities and information technologies. The
committee has identified six specific areas, organized here by proximity and
scale, in which the opportunities for basic research are especially compelling:
1. Integrative studies of the “Critical Zone” the heterogeneous, nearsurface 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. Many science
disciplines—hydrology, geomorphology, biology, ecology, soil
science, sedimentology, materials research, and geochemistry—are
bringing novel research tools to bear on the study of the Critical Zone
as an integrated system of interacting components and processes.
During the next decade, basic research will be able to address a wide
spectrum of interconnected problems that bear directly on societal
interests:
• terrestrial carbon cycle and its relationship to global climate change,
including the temporal and spatial variability of carbon sources and
sinks and the influence of weathering reactions,
• quantification of microbial interactions in mineral weathering, soil
formation, the accumulation of natural resources, and the
mobilization of nutrients and toxins,
• dynamics of the land-ocean interface, which governs how coastal
ocean processes such as tides, waves, and currents interact with river
drainage, groundwater flow, and sediment flux,
• coupling of the tectonic and atmospheric processes through
volcanism, precipitation, fluvial processes, glacier development, and
erosion, which regulate surface topography and influence climate on
geological time scales, and
• formation of a geological record that encodes a four-billion-year
history of Critical-Zone processes, including environmental
variations caused by major volcanic episodes, meteorite impacts, and
other extreme events.
2. Geobiology, the study of how life interacts with the Earth and how it
has changed through geological time. By combining the powerful
tools of genomics, proteinomics, and developmental biology with new
techniques from geochemistry, mineralogy, stratigraphy, and
paleontology, geobiologists are now better equipped to investigate a
variety of fundamental problems:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2
About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the
original work has been recomposed from XML files created
from the original paper book, not from the original
typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths,
word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific
formatting, however, cannot be retained,
and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted.
Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative
version for attribution.