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Hydrologic insights from NEON stable isotope observations
  • +6
  • Stephen Good,
  • Catherine Finkenbiner,
  • Bonan Li,
  • David Noone,
  • Rich Fiorella,
  • Scott Allen,
  • Christopher Still,
  • William Anderegg,
  • Gabriel Bowen
Stephen Good
Oregon State University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Catherine Finkenbiner
Oregon State University
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Bonan Li
University of Arkansas
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David Noone
University of Auckland
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Rich Fiorella
Los Alamos National Labratory
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Scott Allen
University of Nevada Reno
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Christopher Still
Oregon State University
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William Anderegg
University of Utah
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Gabriel Bowen
University of Utah
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Abstract

Water and carbon exchanges between the land and atmosphere reflect key ecohydrologic processes, from global climate change to local watershed dynamics. Environmental stable isotope ratios of H2O and CO2 fluxes have been used to study these processes, yet measurement constraints have limited macroscale surface-atmosphere isotope flux evaluations. Across North American biomes within the US National Ecological Observation Network (NEON), we have worked as a team to translate raw measurements of carbon and water stable isotopes into calibrated daily surface-atmosphere flux isotope ratios for precipitation, evapotranspiration, and net ecosystem carbon exchange. Using information theory metrics, we demonstrate that these isotope observations contain meaningful information about the bulk water and carbon fluxes, with isotope measurements carrying about the same amount of information as wind speed measurements. Decomposition of this multivariate mutual information further shows that: (1) this information is unique, i.e. not carried by other traditional ecosystem measurements; and (2) the information added by isotopes is larger in more arid and cool ecosystems. Combining these isotope fluxes with bulk hydrologic fluxes drawn from a suite of land surface models in a first-order mass balance framework also allows for evaluation of hydrologic model structure and estimated uncertainties in partitioning of fluxes into transpiration, evaporation, overland, and subsurface water fluxes. An inter-model comparison suggests distinct patterns in isotope flux composition associated with disparities in the relative contributions of partitioned fluxes. Our results show that conservative isotope tracers provide novel validation metrics for evaluation of land surface model performance across ecosystems at a continental scale. Broadly, this compilation of datasets - combined with both empirical and process-based isotope modeling - suggests NEON stable isotope observations can improve general understanding of land-surface processes influencing the water and carbon cycles from regional to global scales.