Greenhouse gas cycling is an important component of earth system models that are used to project our future climate. Major physical, chemical and biological processes and controls of greenhouse gas cycling are often incorporated into biogeochemistry models of these gases. In particular, the hydrological cycle has long been linked to these models. However, more adequate hydrological models are still critically needed. Existing biogeochemistry models often contain a simple singlebucket hydrological model. In these hydrological models, the water is simply balanced so as to estimate soil moisture and water fluxes, which are then used to drive biogeochemical processes. These pixelbased hydrological and biogeochemistry models are then extrapolated to regional scales to quantify greenhouse gas cycling. This paradigm ignores the lateral flow induced by elevation or topographical differences between grids across the landscape, biasing estimates of key water fluxes, moisture, and water table depth, leading to errors in the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions.

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