On October 6, 2021, the long-awaited CZNet website was unveiled to the community. Be sure to check it out for updates from every cluster, as well as easy access to job postings and cyberseminars.

CZNet is very excited to announce a children's book about living landscapes from Eric Parrish and Suzanne Anderson from the Dynamic Water Cluster. The concept of living landscapes is intriguing to young minds, exploring the natural world in an integrated way that has not been imparted often in children’s literature. This book discusses how rocks become soil, movers of the critical zone such as gophers and other burrowers, how plants provide food and habitats for insects, birds, and animals, how the water cycle functions, the process of photosynthesis, and how humans are part of this vast system. In sum, it explains how all of life can be found in a thin outer layer called the critical zone. 
The book is now available for pre-order at local bookstores, as well as on Amazon and Indiebound. The book is slated for release in May 2022.

A paper on comparing studies in the CiNET Illinois region with sites in North Carolina was recently published by David Grimley of the CiNet Cluster. The abstract is below:

Fly ash consists of mainly silt-size spherules that form during high-temperature coal combustion, such as in steam locomotives and coal-burning power plants. In the eastern USA, fly ash was distributed across the landscape atmospherically beginning in the late 19th century, peaking in the mid-20th century, and decreasing sharply with implementation of late 20th century particulate pollution controls. Although atmospheric deposition is limited today, fly ash particles continue to be resedimented into alluvial and lacustrine deposits from upland soil erosion and failure of fly ash storage ponds. Magnetic fly ash is easily extracted and identified microscopically, allowing for a simple and reproducible method for identifying post-1850 CE (Common Era) alluvium and lacustrine sediment. In the North Carolina Piedmont, magnetic fly ash was identified within the upper 50 cm at each of eight alluvial sites and one former milldam site. Extracted fly ash spherules have a magnetite or maghemite composition, with substitutions of Al, Si, Ca, and Ti, and range from 3–125 µm in diameter (mainly 10–45 µm). Based on the presence of fly ash, post-1850 alluvial deposits are 15–45 cm thick in central North Carolina river valleys (<0.5 km wide), ~60% thinner than in central Illinois valleys of similar width. Slower sedimentation rates in North Carolina watersheds are likely a result of a less agricultural land and less erodible (more clayey) soils. Artificial reservoirs (Lake Decatur, IL) and milldams (Betty’s Mill, NC), provide chronological tests for the fly ash method and high-resolution records of anthropogenic change. In cores of Lake Decatur sediments, changes in fly ash content appear related to decadal-scale variations in annual rainfall (and runoff), calcite precipitation, land-use changes, and/or lake history, superimposed on longer-term trends in particulate pollution.

The full article is available here.

Opportunity for PhD Students
Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi at University of Texas at El Paso is seeking a PhD student to work on a critical zone project at the Darrouzet-Nardi Lab. The description of the project is below:

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is recruiting Ph.D. students to work on a recently funded 'Critical Zone Thematic Cluster' grant to study carbon fluxes, ecohydrology, and nutrient availability in the carbonate-dominated soils of dryland ecosystems. The critical zone is the surface layer of the Earth from the top of the canopy to the groundwater that supports human life. This NSF-funded project is collaborative, interdisciplinary, and focuses on field-based investigations in Texas, New Mexico, and Idaho. PhD students will have an opportunity to work as part of an integrated scientific team of faculty at UTEP and other collaborative institutions, and foster connections within the scientific community centered around critical zone science. Applications are due by February 1, 2022. Read the full description and instructions to apply here.

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Post Doctoral Fellowship Opportunity
USGS has an opening for a post-doctoral fellowship. They are seeking a Research Hydrologist, Research Geologist, Research Physical Scientist or Research Civil Engineer. A description of their project is below:

Extreme hydrologic events can cause substantial water-quality impairment with disruptive and costly implications for water availability. A definition of extreme events can include statistical metrics such as return periods (e.g., “1000-year storm”) or impact-based metrics (e.g., economic costs of restoration or adaptation; duration of impairment exceeding a drinking water standard). Examples of extreme hydrologic events with water-quality impacts include wildfires, hurricanes, extreme precipitation, severe drought, or the resulting changes to the landscape. While extreme events may be discrete (e.g., hurricane) or multi-decadal (e.g., long-term drought) in duration, the focus here is on short-duration (i.e., < 3 year) events with impacts that are more readily recognized and characterizable in the existing data record. Extreme events may overlap in space and time, complicating identification of individual effects and creating challenges for assessment and prediction. These events can result in water-quality impairment, including increased turbidity; elevated concentrations of nitrate, phosphorus, suspended sediment and bedload, dissolved organic carbon, and manganese; sedimentation of reservoirs and degradation of water-supply systems; reservoir eutrophication and mobilization of metals from bottom sediment; and impaired water-treatment efficiency. These problems lead to decreased water availability, higher water treatment costs, and impairment to aquatic ecosystems. Instructions to apply are available here.

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University of Vermont
A collaboration between Jackson State University and the University of Vermont: combine data science and geoscience investigations to investigate pollution in soil and water in Mississippi and Vermont with a social justice lens.
Join our project called “Using Big Data approaches to assess ecohydrological resilience across scales”.  This new National Science Foundation grant brings together researchers in data science, ecology, hydrology, and biogeochemistry from across the country in a Critical Zone Network to create new knowledge through field and lab work, and improve education, policy, social justice considerations and participation in STEM fields. Learn more and apply here.

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Kansas State University
The student will live and work in the Kansas River basin and be based at Kansas Geological Survey/University of Kansas working with Erin Seybold and Sam Zipper. This student will lead statistical modeling efforts to determine the climatic and agricultural drivers of nutrient loads under current and future climate/management scenarios, and will provide support for field-based water quality monitoring networks. This student will collaborate closely with other scientists (Vaishali Sharda, Kate Nelson at Kansas State), students, postdocs and interact with stakeholders and water managers throughout the region, thus preparing the student for a variety of different career paths in academia, government, and/or industry. Learn more and apply here.

The Future of Critical Zone Science: Towards Shared Goals, Tools, Approaches and Philosophy

Consider submitting your manuscripts to a just-opened special collection on “The Future of Critical Zone Science: Towards Shared Goals, Tools, Approaches and Philosophy”. Submissions are open now until March 31, 2022.
 
Papers can be submitted to Earth’s Future and Water Resources Research. The former is a gold open-access journal and the latter has open-access options. Additionally, Projekt DEAL institutions in Germany can publish gold open access for no fees in any AGU journal.
 
Critical zones and watersheds are “human habitats”, important for sustaining basic human needs such as water, food, and energy as well as providing crucial ecosystem services. Significant progress has been made in establishing long-term international critical zone observatories, which have resulted in novel findings and scientific insights, but also generated new challenges. These new challenges are mainly focused on evaluating, utilizing, and developing concepts, data, methods, and insights from many disciplines, sites and networks in unique ways. This special issue invites original and review-papers that aim to advance our understanding of critical zone systems in response to environmental, technological and societal changes; and build the next generation of tools that bridge across disciplines, sites, and scales.

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Ecology of Critical Zones
Research that investigates the role of ecological processes in shaping the structure and function of the critical zone, the Earth's heterogeneous thin outer veneer extending from the top of the canopy to the base of weathered bedrock and sustains life through its provision of critical zone services such as climate regulation and water purification. Research that is interdisciplinary, especially incorporating geological perspectives and time scales into their studies. Possible topics include the role of plants in plumbing the critical zone, microbes in mediating weathering and other biogeochemical processes, and longer-term geological processes in shaping the community and/or ecosystem structure and function.

We seek research papers that investigates the role of ecological processes in shaping the structure and function of the critical zone, the Earth's heterogeneous thin outer veneer extending from the top of the canopy to the base of weathered bedrock that sustains life through its provision of critical zone services such as climate regulation and water purification. Research that is interdisciplinary, especially incorporating geological perspectives and time scales into their studies, is welcomed. Possible topics include the role of plants in plumbing the critical zone, microbes in mediating weathering and other biogeochemical processes, and longer-term geological processes in shaping the community and/or ecosystem structure and function. Please contact Dr. Kathleen Lohse, Associate Editor, for additional information.

Stay tuned for an upcoming workshop series from the CZHub. The series will host a workshop every other Wednesday beginning on October 27th. Each mini workshop will be held via Zoom and will consist of 15-45 minutes of presentation from members of the CZ Hub team followed by open discussion and question and answer.
The off weeks will consist of "Data Help Sessions." These help sessions will be held during the weeks when Mini Workshops are not held. Help sessions will be held via Zoom and will be an opportunity for CZ Net data managers, students, and/or investigators to connect, ask questions about data management, and get one-on-one help with data management from members of the CZ Hub team. To be the first to know about updates and registration, follow @CZCNet on twitter!

CZNet
Bedrock Cluster
Dust Cluster
CINet Cluster
Big Data Cluster
Drylands Cluster