Byers, Anya听1听;听Waste, Elizabeth听2听;听Barnard, Holly R听3
1听University of Colorado
2听University of Colorado
3听University of Colorado
Processes operating in the hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere interact at multiple scales to determine the structure, function, and health of terrestrial ecosystems. Although over the past 60 years, numerous studies have examined soil hydrologic processes, vegetation function, and micro-climate independently; investigating the feedbacks among these core areas has only recently become a research priority. The new Ecohydrology Lab at the University of Colorado takes advantage of the unique infrastructure and spatial data from the NSF-funded Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research site and the Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory (BcCZO) in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado. We use the variation in the soil development and topography across elevation and climate gradients to conduct natural experiments that will enable us to examine the co-evolution of soil carbon, vegetation, hydrology, and climate. Our organizing questions and approaches are focused on furthering our ability to combine plant water availability, carbon flux and storage, and topographically driven hydrometrics into plot to watershed scale predictive models. We present three current, new projects from the CU Ecohydrology Lab. Within the BcCZO, we are conducting a study to link the physical and biological factors that affect the spatial variability in soil carbon to gain a better understanding of the production and transport of DOC in hillslopes of montane catchments. At Niwot Ridge, we are investigating how lodgepole pine forests influence runoff processes and pathways at the plot to hillslope scale. Our studies at Niwot Ridge are also incorporated into a larger research project examining the changes in evapotranspiration and the subsequent consequences on ecosystem energy flows as the result of bark beetle induced tree mortality across the Colorado and Wyoming Rocky Mountains.