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Operating at the watershed scale, Critical Zone Observatories are natural laboratories for investigating the processes that occur at and near the Earth's surface and that are affected by fresh water. These interconnected processes impact everything from the production of soil to the evolution of biosystems. However, little is known about how these processes are coupled and at what temporal and spatial scales. Research at the CZO scale seeks to understand these couplings and integrations through stream monitoring, climate/weather monitoring and ground water monitoring. CZOs are heavily instrumented for a variety of hydrogeochemical measurements as well as are sampled for soil, canopy and bedrock materials. CZOs also involve teams of cross-disciplinary scientists who have expertise in fields including hydrology, geochemistry, geomorphology, pedology, ecology and climatology.