Soil water stable isotopes reveal evaporation dynamics at the soil–plant–atmosphere interface of the critical zone

Acknowledgements. We are thankful for the support by Audrey Innes during all laboratory work. We further thank Jonathan Dick for running the isotope analysis of precipitation samples and Annette C. Raffan for her support in the soil texture analysis. We would also like to thank the European Research Council (ERC, project GA 335910 VeWa) for fundingPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Estimating flow and transport parameters in the unsaturated zone with pore water stable isotopes

The first author was funded by the DFG Research Group: From Catchments as Organised Systems to Models based on Functional Units (FOR 1598). The second author was funded by the DFG project Coupled soil-plant water dynamics – Environmental drivers and species effects (contract numbers: GE 1090/10-1 and WE 4598/2-1). The isotope data in the precipitation for Roodt were provided by FNR/CORE/SOWAT, project of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – LIST. Sampling of the isotope profiles was made possible by the support of the CAOS Team and Begona Lorente Sistiaga, Benjamin Gralher, Andre Böker, Marvin Reich and Andrea Popp. Special thanks to Britta Kattenstroth and Jean Francois Iffly for their technical support in the field and Barbara Herbstritt for her support in the laboratory. For Roodt, soil texture and hydraulic parameter information were provided by Conrad Jackisch and Christoph Messer (KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany) and hydraulic conductivity data were provided by Christophe Hissler and Jérôme Juilleret (LIST). Pore water isotope and soil moisture data for Hartheim were provided by Steffen Holzkämper and Paul Königer. Temperature and precipitation data for Hartheim were provided by the Chair of Meteorology and Climatology, University of Freiburg.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Water ages in the critical zone of long-term experimental sites in northern latitudes

We thank Pernilla Löfvenius (SLU) for providing PET data for Krycklan (via SITES) and Carl Mitchell for snowmelt data in Dorset. We thank Pertti Ala-aho, Paolo Benettin, Sylvain Kuppel, Aaron A. Smith, and Hailong Wang for constructive discussions on the topic. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Maxwell computing cluster funded by the University of Aberdeen. The Krycklan component of the study was funded by the KAW Branch-Point project. We thank the European Research Council (ERC, project GA 335910 VeWa) for funding. We acknowledge support by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. We thank Todd Walter and two anonymous referees for their critical comments to improve the manuscript. Data availability. The underlaying research data are not publicly available in a repository, as they contain 70 GB. However, they can be requested from the authorsPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Digital reality: a model-based approach to supervised learning from synthetic data

Hierarchical neural networks with large numbers of layers are the state of the art for most computer vision problems including image classification, multi-object detection and semantic segmentation. While the computational demands of training such deep networks can be addressed using specialized hardware, the availability of training data in sufficient quantity and quality remains a limiting factor. Main reasons are that measurement or manual labelling are prohibitively expensive, ethical considerations can limit generating data, or a phenomenon in questions has been predicted, but not yet observed. In this position paper, we present the Digital Reality concept are a structured approach to generate training data synthetically. The central idea is to simulate measurements based on scenes that are generated by parametric models of the real world. By investigating the parameter space defined of such models, training data can be generated in a controlled way compared to data that was captured from real world situations. We propose the Digital Reality concept and demonstrate its potential in different application domains, including industrial inspection, autonomous driving, smart grid, and microscopy research in material science and engineering

Measuring and Modeling Stable Isotopes of Mobile and Bulk Soil Water

We thank Audrey Innes for support with the isotope analysis at University of Aberdeen for the Bruntland Burn and Krycklan sites, Johannes Tiwari (SLU) for the isotope sampling in Krycklan, Pernilla Löfvenius (SLU) for providing PET data for Krycklan, Pertti Ala-aho for providing snowmelt simulations for Krycklan, and Kimberely Janzen (University of Saskatoon) for soil water isotope analysis for the Dorset sites. The work at Krycklan was supported by KAW Branch-Points. We thank the European Research Council (ERC, project GA 335910 VeWa) for funding. We thank two anonymous reviewers and the associate editor for their suggestions and comments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Stable isotopes of water reveal differences in plant – soil water relationships across northern environments

Funding Information: We thank the European Research Council ERC for funding (VeWa project GA 335910). Contributions from CS were supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the ISO-LAND project (RPG 2018 375). Support for MJK and JPM were provided by the US National Science Foundation (EAR0842367) and Boise State University. We thank Dr. Samantha Evans for technical support. Thanks to the Dorset Environmental Science Centre for provision of meteorological data. The work conducted in Krycklan was partly financed by SITES (VR) and the KAW Branch-Point project. We would like to acknowledge Dr. Nadine Shatilla for collection of the Wolf Creek samples and the Global Water Futures program for financial support. We also would like to sincerely thank Jeff McDonnell for his support throughout the VeWa project and all participants in the different VeWa workshops esp. Tanya Doody and Marco Maneta for their invaluable input into the discussions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Evaporation fractionation in a peatland drainage network affects stream water isotope composition

There is increasing interest in improving understanding of evaporation within a catchment for an enhanced representation of dominant processes in hydrological models. We used a dual‐isotope approach within a nested experimental design in a boreal catchment in the Scottish Highlands (Bruntland Burn) to quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of evaporation fractionation in a peatland drainage network and its effect on stream water isotopes. We conducted spatially distributed water sampling within the saturated peatland under different wetness conditions. We used the lc‐excess—which describes the offset of a water sample from the local meteoric water line in the dual‐isotope space—to understand the development of kinetic fractionation during runoff in a peatland network. The evaporation fractionation signal correlated positively with the potential evapotranspiration and negatively with the discharge. The variability of the isotopic enrichment within the peatland drainage network was higher with higher potential evapotranspiration and lower with higher discharge. We found an increased evaporation fractionation toward the center of the peatland, while groundwater seepage from minerogenic soils influenced the isotopic signal at the edge of the peatland. The evaporation signal was imprinted on the stream water, as the discharge from a peatland dominated subcatchment showed a more intense deviation from the local meteoric water line than the discharge from the Bruntland Burn. The findings underline that evaporation fractionation within peatland drainage networks affects the isotopic signal of headwater catchments, which questions the common assumption in hydrological modeling that the isotopic composition of stream waters did not undergo fractionation processes

Chemical imaging of mixed metal oxide catalysts for propylene oxidation: from model binary systems to complex multicomponent systems

Industrially-applied mixed metal oxide catalysts often possess an ensemble of structural components with complementary functions. Characterisation of these hierarchical systems is challenging, particularly moving from binary to quaternary systems. Here a quaternary Bi−Mo−Co−Fe oxide catalyst showing significantly greater activity than binary Bi−Mo oxides for selective propylene oxidation to acrolein was studied with chemical imaging techniques from the microscale to nanoscale. Conventional techniques like XRD and Raman spectroscopy could only distinguish a small number of components. Spatially-resolved characterisation provided a clearer picture of metal oxide phase composition, starting from elemental distribution by SEM-EDX and spatially-resolved mapping of metal oxide components by 2D Raman spectroscopy. This was extended to 3D using multiscale hard X-ray tomography with fluorescence, phase, and diffraction contrast. The identification and co-localisation of phases in 2D and 3D can assist in rationalising catalytic performance during propylene oxidation, based on studies of model, binary, or ternary catalyst systems in literature. This approach is generally applicable and attractive for characterisation of complex mixed metal oxide systems. © 2021 The Authors. ChemCatChem published by Wiley-VCH Gmb

Form and function in hillslope hydrology : Characterization of subsurface flow based on response observations

The phrase form and function was established in architecture and biology and refers to the idea that form and functionality are closely correlated, influence each other, and co-evolve. We suggest transferring this idea to hydrological systems to separate and analyze their two main characteristics: their form, which is equivalent to the spatial structure and static properties, and their function, equivalent to internal responses and hydrological behavior. While this approach is not particularly new to hydrological field research, we want to employ this concept to explicitly pursue the question of what information is most advantageous to understand a hydrological system. We applied this concept to subsurface flow within a hillslope, with a methodological focus on function: we conducted observations during a natural storm event and followed this with a hillslope-scale irrigation experiment. The results are used to infer hydrological processes of the monitored system. Based on these findings, the explanatory power and conclusiveness of the data are discussed. The measurements included basic hydrological monitoring methods, like piezometers, soil moisture, and discharge measurements. These were accompanied by isotope sampling and a novel application of 2-D time-lapse GPR (ground-penetrating radar). The main finding regarding the processes in the hillslope was that preferential flow paths were established quickly, despite unsaturated conditions. These flow paths also caused a detectable signal in the catchment response following a natural rainfall event, showing that these processes are relevant also at the catchment scale. Thus, we conclude that response observations (dynamics and patterns, i.e., indicators of function) were well suited to describing processes at the observational scale. Especially the use of 2-D time-lapse GPR measurements, providing detailed subsurface response patterns, as well as the combination of stream-centered and hillslope-centered approaches, allowed us to link processes and put them in a larger context. Transfer to other scales beyond observational scale and generalizations, however, rely on the knowledge of structures (form) and remain speculative. The complementary approach with a methodological focus on form (i.e., structure exploration) is presented and discussed in the companion paper by Jackisch et al.(2017)

Illuminating hydrological processes at the soil-vegetation-atmosphere interface with water stable isotopes

Funded by DFG research project “From Catchments as Organised Systems to Models based on Functional Units” (FOR 1Peer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD