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Earth’s “critical zone”, the zone of the planet from treetops to base of groundwater, is critical because it is a sensitive region, open to impacts from human activities, while providing water necessary for human consumption and food production. Quan-tifying water movement and stores in the subsurface is funda-mental to predicting how water-driven critical zone (CZ) pro-cesses will respond to changes in climate and human perturba-tion. While shallow soils and above-ground parts of the CZ can be easy to instrument and explore, the deeper parts through the soils and into rock are harder to access, leaving many open questions about the role of water in this environment. Geo-physical tools are central to the quantitative study of processes where we don't have easy access for observation. Here, we will explore the role of geophysics as a “macroscope” for providing information on some key CZ processes: storage and partition-ing of water, tree-water use, and biogeochemical reactions.

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