Hi everyone. Thanks for reading the introductory post on my new blog, The Critical Zone. I am a 5th year Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech. This spring I plan on graduating with a degree in Geosciences (research focus: biogeochemistry and geomicrobiology). I’m not quite sure where I’ll end up once I graduate, but I do know where this blog is going to take us… on a JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH!

Okay, not exactly. We’ll actually only get about 0.0001% of the way down (this is actually a modest amount considering the deepest drill has only made it as far as 0.03% into the Earth). But a lot of interesting things happen away from the deep mysterious interior of our planet. By a lot, I mean that virtually every natural process which is critical to sustaining life on our planet occurs in the zone (aka The Critical Zone), from the topmost forest canopy down to groundwater aquifers. This includes all of our freshwater resources, the soil that sustains agriculture and forests, a vast quantity of invisible but influential microbial biomass, and our breathable air.

But not all is well in the Critical Zone. In fact, there is a growing conflict as nature attempts to coexist with one major disrupting force: people. Consider these haunting facts:

• Over half of the Earth’s surface has been modified in some way by people
• Virtually all of the surface water on Earth has been rerouted, overused, or polluted in some way
• Humans now move about 10 times more soil/sediment than all natural processes combined
• Countless gallons of organic, radioactive, and/or toxic waste products have been dumped into our groundwater

This blog will attempt to provide musings on the science focused on understanding the Critical Zone, the environmental impact of humans, and what we as scientists are doing to reverse those trends. I hope to cover topics across a wide range of scientific disciplines including geology, soil science, microbiology, hydrology, forestry, biology, atmospheric science, and environmental engineering. But also, I hope to help bring to light societal actions that have direct consequences on the sustainability of the Critical Zone, such as public policy, environmental regulation and resource management, and other forms of environmental dialogue in the news. I am not really an expert in any of these fields so I’ll rely on your input as well. Please make use of the commenting tool underneath each post; it’ll help me learn a bit about the kind of a job I’m doing.

So, I hope you feel that these issues are important enough to follow along with me as I begin this journey. It’ll be painless, I promise. And although it’s not the stuff of science fiction, it certainly has the potential to be just as exciting.