In October 2015, I joined the Critical Zone Observatory Network’s national office as a post-doctoral fellow. This is quite the loaded statement so I’ll address the following questions that may have arisen: What is the Critical Zone? What are the observatories? What does the national office do?
Well the Critical Zone is the permeable layer of rock to the tree tops. It encompasses the non-living rocks that are becoming the life-sustaining soils. The critical zone extends to the immediate atmosphere in which trees may capture water and dust. Understanding and protecting this zone is key to maintaining life on earth. However, we can’t compile information from just anywhere. That is where the critical zone observatories come in to play. They watersheds or plots of land dedicated to collecting the information needed to determine how different critical zones function and predict or measure changes. Because the whole is greater than the sum of the pieces, the national office was established to orchestrate efforts and promote research that utilizes multiple critical zone observatories to answer deeper questions. Most importantly, the national office is aimed at disseminating the information learned from the different critical zone observatories to the general public. The national office is jointly situated at Cornell University in Ithaca NY and Penn State, State College, PA.
Check out the website: Criticalzone.org for additional facts or feel free to email me!