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We emphasize quantitative prediction of Critical Zone creation and structure, focusing on pathways and rates of water, solutes, and sediments
News and Updates
January edition of CSA News features the Critical Zone and Observatories --> read here
NSF article highlights new research project stemming from SSHCZO --> read here
SSHCZO Spring 2012 Seminar Series - get schedule --> here!
Science Nation video features Shale Hills CZO --> view here
CZO PI featured in flood forecasting article for Research | Penn State
The Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) is a forested, small, temperate-climate catchment in central Pennsylvania in which the regolith is developing upon homogeneous shale. The purpose of the observatory and associated interdisciplinary research is to quantitatively predict the creation, evolution, and structure of regolith as a function of the geochemical, hydrologic, biologic, and geomorphologic processes operating in a temperate, forested landscape.
By creating an interdisciplinary team working collaboratively in one
observatory we aim to advance methods for characterizing regolith, to
provide a theoretical basis for predicting the distribution and
properties of regolith, and to theoretically and experimentally study
the impacts of regolith on fluid pathways, flow rates, and residence
times. The research site, the focus of National Science
Foundation-supported research since the 1970s, has comprehensive
datasets on distributed water budgets (1970-75), has served as a model
test bed for hydrological response (1998-present), and will be
augmented here by new geochemical, geomorphological, ecological, lidar,
and soils datasets, all available to the research community.
Susquehanna Shale Hills CZO represents an opportunity to investigate
the rates and mechanisms of saprolite and soil formation on a relatively simple but
ubiquitous bedrock lithology that has been documented to be important
in determining global fluxes of C, P, and platinum–group elements
worldwide. Furthermore, the regolith at Shale Hills has experienced at
least two potentially significant perturbations in the geologically
recent past: a climatic perturbation from periglacial to modern
conditions, and a biologic perturbation from anthropogenic clearing of
forests during and repeatedly since colonial occupation. The magnitude
of these perturbations and their influence on regolith generation
afford an opportunity to assess the time scales of response of soil
production to both long-term climate change and human activity.
The Susquehanna Shale Hills Observatory includes a transect of satellite study sites representing a climosequence spanning from central New York through the Appalachian Mountains to Alabama, all located on the same Silurian shale formation. Additional satellites are located in Puerto Rico and Wales. Partner institutions near each site include undergraduate only colleges as well as minority serving institutions. At each site, soil and bedrock samples have been collected, and meteorological and soil moisture/temperature instrumentation has been deployed, the focus of an ongoing Penn State Geosciences PhD pursuit.
View Leaf Area Index movie for 2010 --> here.
View time lapse photos of the catchment --> here.
