The Earth's critical zone isn't called critical for nothing. Known as our planet's outer skin, it is essential for human survival. The critical zone extends from the top of the tallest tree down ...

Over a five year span starting in 1799, the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt traveled through the Americas, meticulously measuring all that he encountered. Carrying dozens of scientific ...

Climate change and sea level rise are increasing the amount of saltwater that intrudes across coastal ecosystems, and scientists are anxious to understand how these systems are experiencing these ...

In a report released today, scientists call for a new systematic study of the Earth’s “critical zone”–the life-sustaining outermost surface of the planet, from the vegetation canopy to groundwater and ...

Three CU Boulder faculty are principal investigators on a new five-year, $6.9 million National Science Foundation grant to study the “critical zone”—from Earth’s bedrock to tree canopy top—in the ...

On the high slopes of the Eel River watershed on California’s North Coast Range, large conifers sink their roots deep through the soil and into fractures in the mudstone bedrock, tapping water ...

The UA’s Critical Zone Observatory, located in the Santa Catalina Mountains, is a research facility funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency. The main objective of the ...

The Earth's Critical Zone encompasses our air, water, ground, all of the organisms within them, and the processes that link them together, from the atmosphere to the bedrock of the planet. In a new ...

The layer of Earth where life exists, from the top of the tallest trees to the bottom of the groundwater table, is called the “critical zone.” What happens to this zone in the face of natural and ...

Let’s take as a starting point that “the Earth is moving yet again.” It is shifting, unstable, reactive; it’s different one year, or minute, to the next. In an age of rising seas and mass extinctions, ...