Critical Zone Science & Management

This new course will serve as a comprehensive introduction to the latest advances and ideas of Critical Zone Science. The University of Arizona version of this course will be led by Dr. Jim Washburne. This course is part of a team development effort spread across five CZO’s and is part of SERC’s Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) Series. Science students from all CZO disciplines can benefit from the course’s systematic presentation of key CZ topics (including: CZO Background, Methods in CZ Science, Land-atmosphere Exchange, Water Transfers through the CZ, Landform & Landscape evolution, Geochem & Biogeochem, and Humans in the Critical Zone). An outline of the Land-atmosphere Exchange module can be found at: http://web.sahra.arizona.edu/hwr203/czo.

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Pedology Course

The SWES upper division and graduate class Soil Genesis, Morphology and Classification, taught by investigator C. Rasmussen, takes field trips observe soils across the Santa Catalina Mountain environmental gradient. The field trips highlight the importance of climate, parent material, vegetation, and aspect in controlling soil formation and soil forming processes. These trips tie directly to CZO related research and results from CZO research are incorporated into the curriculum for this course.

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Snow Hydrology Course

The Snow Hydrology Course, led by Prof. Paul Brooks, includes an annual Spring Break field trip to the Jemez River Basin CZO that normally coincides with near maximal snowpack and SWE. Students in the class learn techniques of snow survey including depth dependent measurements of snow water equivalent, that provides a basis for long term CZO data acquisition and analysis and results are summarized in the paper:

Harpold, A.A., P.D. Brooks, S. Rajagopal, I. Heiduechel, A. Jardine, and C. Stielstra. (In Review). Changes in Snowpack Accumulation and Ablation in the Intermountain West. Water Resources Research.

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Geomorphology Field Course

The graduate-level geomorphology field and modeling course, taught by Prof. Jon Pelletier, includes field-based measurements in the Jemez River Basin and Santa Catalina Mountains CZO sites. A recent set of studies involved collaborative, class-wide, calibration and testing of upland hillslope evolution models and resulted in the paper:

Pelletier, J.D., L.A. McGuire, J. L. Ash, T. M. Engelder, L. E. Hill, K. W. Leroy, C. A. Orem, W. S. Rosenthal, M. A. Trees, C. Rasumussen, and J. Chorover. 2011. Calibration and testing of upland hillslope evolution models in a dated landscape: Banco Bonito, New Mexico. J. Geophys. Res. - Earth Surface 116, F04004, doi: 10.1029/2011JF001976.

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Advanced Topics in Hydro-Bio-Geochemistry Interactions

Students in this team taught (3 CZO PIs) seminar course spend several days over Spring Break in the Jemez River Basin CZO site collecting and analyzing snow and surface water samples to investigate hydrologic and biogeochemical processes in seasonally snow-covered catchments. This work ties into CZO cross-theme efforts in subsurface biogeochemistry, surface water dynamics, and ecohydrologic partitioning.

Brooks, P.D., P.A. Troch, M. Durcik, E. Gallo, and M. Schlegel (2011) Quantifying regional-scale ecosystem response to changes in precipitation: Not all rain is created equal, Water Resources Research, Water Resources Research, 47, W00J08, doi:10.1029/2010WR009762

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Field Hydrology Course

The University of Arizona's Field Hydrology course, led by Prof. Tom Meixner (HWR), has used the Biosphere 2 tower site on Mount Bigelow for its annual snow field course exercise. This exercise ties into CZO related work on snow-vegetation interactions. Additionally the field course measures streamflow and chemical/isotopic composition of water in Sabino Creek at the USGS stream gauge for Sabino Creek. The students focus on understanding storm influences on streamflow and on chemical composition.