PNNL

The Science 

This study designed and deployed a sensor network to detect when and where biogeochemical reactions occur at high rates in coastal landscapes. These events are a type of control point which governs ecosystem function and state. They often occur where land meets water, also known as terrestrial-aquatic interfaces (TAIs). A new sensor network designed to be flexible, adaptable, and standardized was successfully deployed at ten coastal sites in the Chesapeake Bay and western Lake Erie basin. This included a large scale flood manipulation experiment in each region to capture elusive ecosystem behaviors. Initial data from this new sensor network indicate that coastal flooding events have cascading effects on both soil biogeochemistry and plant physiology. Knowing how and when environmental conditions influence coastal ecosystems helps predict how they will respond to storms, floods, and other water level changes.

The Impact 

This research helps scientists better predict how nutrients move through landscapes during storms, storm surges, and lake level change. The open-source, documented sensor network design is flexible enough to deploy in nearly any type of TAI. It is also adaptable to the needs of small or large research projects. The sensor network provides key data needed for improving ecosystem model and manage TAI ecosystems. By sharing the specific designs of the deployed network, these new methods for connecting ecosystem science to hydrology and biogeochemistry provide a blueprint for large-scale field coordination and make this approach widely accessible to the scientific community.

Summary 

This study presents a multi-site field experiment designed to investigate biogeochemical control points, short-lived periods, or locations with high rates of nutrient transformations across TAIs. By deploying a shared measurement strategy across ten coastal field sites in the United States, the research team tested how these control points vary by location, hydrologic state, and ecosystem type. The study involved coordinated deployment of ~2000 sensors in soils, trees, and water across transects encompassing coastal upland forests, wetlands, surface waters and the transitions between each type of ecosystem. The sensor network produces more than six million observations per month, providing key information for both process-based predictive models and data-driven artificial intelligence models. The sensor network was designed to help reveal how water movement and landscape context shape biogeochemical cycling at ecosystem boundaries, advancing our understanding of key processes that regulate ecosystem stability and predictability. 

Contact 

Daniel Stover, Environmental System Science Program, daniel.stover@science.doe.gov, (301) 903-0289

Vanessa L. Bailey, COMPASS-FME principal investigator, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, vanessa.bailey@pnnl.gov, (509) 375-6695

Nick Ward, corresponding author, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Nicholas.Ward@pnnl.gov

Funding 

This work was supported through the Field, Measurements, and Experiments (FME) component of the Coastal Observations, Mechanisms, and Predictions Across Systems and Scales (COMPASS) program. COMPASS-FME is a multi-institutional project supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research as part of the Environmental System Science Program. This project was led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute. Additional support was provided by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. 

Related Link

COMPASS-FME Project Website