Natural phenomena and human activities alter hydrological and biogeochemical cycles and challenge hydrologists and biogeochemists to represent interactions between flow and substance turnover. New tracers and innovative modeling strategies are needed to understand these complex interactions between hydrological and biogeochemical cycles within the critical zone (the heterogeneous layer between the bedrock and atmosphere, also described as the living skin of the Earth).
This session invites new advances in coupling both disciplines (hydrology and biogeochemistry) at the critical zone as a whole or within its different compartments, through field and modeling studies, to understand and predict how our planet will evolve in the Anthropocene, e.g. how water quality, water availability or ecological health will be impacted by the increasing footprint of human activities.
We are especially inviting contributions that:
1/ develop innovative concepts and approaches that address the interdependency between flow and reactivity, e.g. investigations based on travel times of water and solutes.
2/ inform these concepts with combined multi-tracer and modeling approaches to enable estimations on the partitioning of fluxes between different reservoirs and associated reaction kinetics by tracing water and biogeochemical activity.