Ecohydrological Connectivity and Lateral Fluxes Across Critical Zone Interfaces: From Plot to Landscape Scales

The critical zone, extending from bedrock to the top of the vegetation canopy, is organised into distinct landscape units that are rarely hydrologically or biogeochemically independent. Water, carbon, nutrients, and contaminants move laterally across the boundaries between them, along forest–wetland, urban–wetland, and upland–riparian transitions, and these transfers exert a strong influence on catchment behaviour, water quality, and ecosystem function. Yet research in this area remains heavily weighted toward vertical processes and toward dynamics within individual plots or ecosystems. The interfaces themselves, and the lateral fluxes that pass through them, are comparatively poorly quantified.This gap matters because connectivity is not a fixed property. It varies with hydrological state, season, land use, and climate, and it can strengthen, weaken, or reorganise under environmental change. Understanding how interface-scale mechanisms aggregate into landscape-scale patterns is therefore essential for predicting how critical zone systems will respond to changing conditions, and for interpreting the signals observed at catchment outlets.This Research Topic places between-system connectivity at the centre of investigation. It aims to advance understanding of how ecohydrological connectivity and lateral fluxes of water, carbon, nutrients, and contaminants operate across critical zone interfaces, and how they propagate and interact from the plot to the landscape scale. Contributions should treat the interface or the connection itself as the object of study, and provide quantified evidence of cross-boundary transfer or connectivity. Studies of processes confined within a single landscape unit, without an interface or connectivity component, fall outside the scope.We particularly welcome work that extends beyond the plot or ecosystem level to landscape and broader spatial scales, and that links mechanism to pattern across scales. Approaches of interest include field measurement and interface instrumentation, tracer-based methods, remote sensing, and spatially explicit modelling.Themes include, but are not limited to:o Quantification of lateral water, carbon, nutrient, and contaminant fluxes across critical zone interfaceso Ecohydrological connectivity along forest–wetland, urban–wetland, and upland–riparian transitionso Temporal dynamics of connectivity, including intermittency, thresholds, and hydrological state dependenceo Scaling of interface processes from plot to hillslope, catchment, and landscapeo Tracer, isotope, and sensor-based approaches for detecting and quantifying cross-boundary transfero Remote sensing and spatially explicit modelling of connectivity patternso Responses of connectivity and lateral fluxes to land use change, climate change, and disturbanceo Implications of connectivity for water quality, biogeochemical cycling, and ecosystem functionWe welcome original research, reviews, and methodological contributions that connect interface-scale mechanisms with landscape-scale patterns and advance an integrative framework for critical zone dynamics under environmental change. Topic editors: Zhendong Hong, Gang-Jun Liu, Hao Han Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84620/ecohydrological-connectivity-and-lateral-fluxes-across-critical-zone-interfaces-from-plot-to-landscape-scales