Résumé
During the past two decades, Earth surface and environmental scientists have considered the critical zone (CZ), the next evolutionary step in the understanding of the thin skin of Earth where “rock meets life” (Brantley et al. 2007). The CZ encompasses the thin outer veneer of the Earth’s continental land surfaces extending from the top of the vegetation canopy down to subsurface depths of fresh groundwater (US National Research Council 2001). While CZ structure and function have evolved in response to climatic and tectonic perturbations throughout Earth’s history, the processes driving change have more recently accelerated during the Anthropocene due to human alterations (e.g., Vitousek et al. 1996; Wilkinson 2005; Steffen et al. 2007). In the USA, the initial focus of CZ research was on relatively undisturbed and “pristine” environments with a focus on the study of natural processes of the CZ. In Europe, due to the longer-term influence of humans in human-disturbed environments, CZ processes have been more systematically studied, but without explicitly considering the human component of the CZ. The integration of the human dimension as both a driver and response variable is increasingly demanded for a new generation of CZ studies (Naylor et al. 2023). Concomitantly, the concept of socio-ecological systems has integrated at its core human–nature interactions with physical, ecological, and social components (Berkes et al. 1998). The complexity of CZ interactions with SES has however remained understudied (Barreteau et al. 2016; Huggins et al. 2023; Sullivan et al. 2022)