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Linking Hydrologic and Biogeochemical Cycles

The diversity and gradients in terrestrial ecosystems in the Great Salt Lake Basin provide the opportunity to study a variety of causal relationships between watershed attributes, the flux of water, sediment, and chemicals from the watershed, structural and thermal habitat, and aquatic biota. Some of the questions that have arisen include:

How does climate variability affect soil microclimate (temperature and moisture regime) and soil organic carbon dynamics (SOC distribution, quality, decomposition, leaching) in vegetation types?

How does the sparse distribution of vegetation in much of the western U.S. and the variability of canopy structure and type (e.g. forests, sage, willows, etc.) influence the distribution of precipitation, evaporation/sublimation, and transpiration?

How will changing land use from predominantly agricultural to increasingly urban impact nutrient sources, loads, and cycling processes in the rivers of the Great Salt Lake Basin?

How might coupled biogeochemical cycles of C, N and P change with a transition from agricultural to urban land uses?

The dynamics of salts, nutrients, biological species, and surface water/groundwater interactions are highly nonlinear, yet the long-term evolution of these fluxes appears to be well organized. Consequently, closed basins provide an excellent natural laboratory to study one end point of the interaction of water, earth, and biota with planetary climate (Duffy and Lall, 2001).

Conceptual diagram showing the casual relationships between watershed attributes; the flux of water, sediment, and chemicals from the watershed; structural and thermal habitat; and aquatic biota.

References

Duffy, C. J. and U. Lall, (2001), "The Great Basin as a Natural Laboratory for the Conjoint Dynamics of Water, Earth, Biota and Climate Mass Fluxes," Eos. Trans. AGU, 82(47): Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract H42A-0338.

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