The objective of the WP3 “Instrumentation” is to organize the management of instruments acquired in the Equipex CRITEX via an inventory of the acquired sensors, their current use and the identification of those that can be shared. The objective is also to reflect on the needs for innovative instrumentation to document the Critical Zone, and to share the know-how of the different OZCAR-RI’s communities, in particular on common themes (extreme climatic conditions, teletransmission, etc.). The WP3 also aims to converge towards harmonized protocols and set of variables.
Deploying innovative instrumentation
Within the framework of Equipex CRITEX, a “RiverLab” prototype for high-frequency measurement of river chemistry has been developed. This prototype led to the creation of a Start-Up, Extralab (https://extralab-system.com/) which promotes this know-how. To date, three “RiverLab” have been deployed within OZCAR’s observatories: one on ORACLE (Orgeval watershed), one on OHGE (Strengbach watershed), and one on AgrHys (Naizin site).
The deployment of some measurement devices acquired in CRITEX is carried out by Sylvain Pasquet, postdoctoral fellow and geophysicist expert, who has been working for OZCAR-RI since February 2018.
Discover the “hidden” compartments of Critical Zone
The beginning of the postdoctoral period allowed to take note of the specific problems of the OZCAR-RI’s observatories and to discuss with the site PIs about the actions to be carried out, whether it is the characterization of the deep structure of the Critical Zone or for the temporal monitoring of the processes which occur there.
Our knowledge of the deep structure of the Critical Zone, is indeed, rather limited, while its plays a main role in many key processes such as groundwater circulation and storage, water-exchange between soil and vegetation or soil formation and sediment production. Sylvain Pasquet’s expertise in geophysical imagery has been used to “highlight” these “hidden” compartments of the Critical Zone using geophysical methods available through CRITEX.
Since 2019, numerous measurement/data acquisitions have taken place on different experimental sites of the OZCAR-RI.