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- Destouni, Georgia, et al.
(författare)
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Biogeochemical Transformation Pathways through the Land-water Geosphere
- 2014
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Water on land undergoes and participates in many biogeochemical exchanges and changes. A bits-and-pieces approach to these may miss essential aspects of change propagation and transformation by land-water through different segments of the Earth system. This paper proposes a conceptualization of the entire land-water geosphere as a scale-free catchment-wise organised system (Figure 1), emphasizing four key new system aspects compared to traditional hydrosphere/water cycle view: i) distinction of coastal divergent in addition to traditional convergent catchments; ii) physical and social-ecological system coupling through four main nodal zones/interfaces (surface, subsurface, coastal, observation); iii) flow-transport pathways as system coupling agents; iv) multiple interactions with the anthroposphere as integral system parts. Utilizing this conceptualization, we identify distinct patterns of direct anthropogenic change in large-scale water and waterborne nutrient fluxes, emerging across different parts of the world. In general, its embedment directly in the anthroposphere/technosphere makes land-water a key geosphere for understanding and monitoring human-driven biogeochemical changes. Further progress in system-level understanding of such changes requires studies of land-water as a continuous yet structured geosphere following the proposed spatiotemporal pathways of change propagation-transformation.
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| 2. |
- Destouni, Georgia, 1961-, et al.
(författare)
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Needs and means to advance science, policy and management understanding of the freshwater system : A synthesis report
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fragmented and inconsistent understanding of the freshwater system limits our ability to achieve water security and sustainability under the human-driven changes occurring in the Anthropocene. To advance system-level understanding of freshwater, gaps and inconsistencies in knowledge, data, representations and links of processes and subsystems need to be identified and bridged under consideration of the freshwater system as a continuous whole. Based on such identification, a freshwater system conceptualization is developed in this report, which emphasizes four essential, yet often neglected system aspects:i) Distinction of coastal divergent catchments.ii) Four main zones (surface, subsurface, coastal, observation) of different types of freshwater change.iii) Water pathways as system-coupling agents that link and partition water change among the four change zones.iv) Direct interactions with the anthroposphere as integral system pathways across the change zones.We explain and exemplify some key implications of these aspects, identifying in the process also distinct patterns of human-driven changes in large-scale water fluxes and nutrient loads.The present conceptualization provides a basis for common inter- and trans-disciplinary understanding and systematic characterization of the freshwater system function and its changes, and of approaches to their modeling and monitoring. This can be viewed and used as a unifying checklist that can advance science, policy and management of freshwater and related environmental changes across various scales and world regions.
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