Critical Zone Data Pipeline

Data collection programs that monitor the Earth’s critical zone (CZ) are becoming increasingly common, aimed at measuring the flux, elemental composition, and distribution of water and matter. Programs often span various spatial and temporal scales leading to challenges for data assimilation and, as a result, limit holistic multi-scale perspectives of hydro-biogeochemical cycling. The CZDP will ultimately synchronize existing repositories of wet deposition chemistry from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), meteorology from Daymet, stream chemistry and discharge timeseries from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). I use a data pipeline approach to develop an algorithm that will access each public data repository, pair data based on geocoordinates and timeseries overlap, extract relevant variables, and analyze data. The structure of the data pipeline works from top to bottom of the CZ such that wet deposition chemistry is the focal merging attribute. The resulting data product can be aggregated for paired wet deposition chemistry and daily meteorological variables, or paired timeseries of wet deposition inputs and river exports within the same watershed, or a combination of all data inputs. These datasets can be used by researchers in hydrology, biogeochemistry, global change biology, and Earth system science.