The Intensively Managed Landscape Critical Zone Observatory: A Scientific Testbed for Understanding Critical Zone Processes in Agroecosystems

Abstract

The measurements and corresponding observational strategy are organized as follows. First, reference measurements from surface soil and deep core extractions, geophysical surveys, lidar, and hyperspectral data, which are common across all Critical Zone Observatories, are available. The reference measurements include continuous quantification of energy, water, solutes, and sediment fluxes. The reference measurements are complemented with event‐based measurements unique to IML‐CZO. These measurements include water table fluctuations, enrichment ratios, and roughness as well as bank erosion, hysteresis, sediment sources, and lake/floodplain sedimentation. The coupling of reference and event‐based measurements support testing of the central hypothesis (i.e., system shifts from transformer to transporter in IML‐CZO due to the interplay between management and weather/climate). Data collected since 2014 are available through a data repository and through the Geodashboard interface, which can be used for process‐based model simulations.