The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone
The time that water takes to travel through the terrestrial hydrological cycle and the critical zone is of great interest in Earth system sciences with broad implications for water quality and quantity. Most water age studies to date have focused on individual compartments (or subdisciplines) of the hydrological cycle such as the unsaturated or saturated zone, vegetation, atmosphere, or rivers. However, recent studies have shown that processes at the interfaces between the hydrological compartments (e.g., soil-atmosphere or soil-groundwater) govern the age distribution of the water fluxes between these compartments and thus can greatly affect water travel times. The broad variation from complete to nearly absent mixing of water at these interfaces affects the water ages in the compartments. This is especially the case for the highly heterogeneous critical zone between the top of the vegetation and the bottom of the groundwater storage. Here, we review a wide variety of studies about water ages in the critical zone and provide (1) an overview of new prospects and challenges in the use of hydrological tracers to study water ages, (2) a discussion of the limiting assumptions linked to our lack of process understanding and methodological transfer of water age estimations to individual disciplines or compartments, and (3) a vision for how to improve future interdisciplinary efforts to better understand the feedbacks between the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, groundwater, and surface water that control water ages in the critical zone. © 2019. The Authors.
Main Authors: | Sprenger, Matthias, Stumpp, Christine, Penna, Daniele, Rodriguez, Nicolas B., Werner, Christiane |
---|---|
Other Authors: | Sprenger, Matthias [0000-0003-1221-2767] |
Format: | artículo biblioteca |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2019-09-01
|
Subjects: | Critical zone, Stable isotopes, Water ages, Terrestrial water cycle, Tracer hydrology, |
Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/199691 |
Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
Similar Items
-
Response of soil water movement and groundwater recharge to extreme precipitation in a headwater catchment in the North China Plain
by: Zheng, Wenbo, et al.
Published: (2019-09) -
Mechanisms of consistently disjunct soil water pools over (pore) space and time
by: Sprenger, Matthias, et al.
Published: (2019-06-28) -
Using isotopes to incorporate tree water storage and mixing dynamics into a distributed ecohydrologic modelling framework
by: Knighton, James, et al.
Published: (2020-02-18) -
Regional patterns of δ13C and δ15N for European common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) throughout the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea
by: Wells, R.J. David, et al.
Published: (2021-09) -
Ideas and perspectives: Tracing terrestrial ecosystem water fluxes using hydrogen and oxygen stable isotopes - Challenges and opportunities from an interdisciplinary perspective
by: Penna, Daniele, et al.
Published: (2018-10-30)