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<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="methods-article" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-3419</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Technical note: Evaluation of a new cryogenic airtight vapor extraction (CRAVE) method for soil and plant water</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Xiuqiang</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6696-7458</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Hongxiu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Xi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Ying</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0346-5631</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Nehemy</surname>
<given-names>Magali F.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2212-3592</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>McDonnell</surname>
<given-names>Jeffrey J.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff8">
<sup>8</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff9">
<sup>9</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Earth System Science, Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Global Institute for Water Security, School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Department of Soil Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Tianjin Key Laboratory of Earth Critical Zone Science and Sustainable Development in Bohai Rim, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of British Columbia Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff8">
<label>8</label>
<addr-line>North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff9">
<label>9</label>
<addr-line>School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham; Birmingham, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>26</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>35</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Xiuqiang Liu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3419/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3419/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3419/egusphere-2026-3419.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3419/egusphere-2026-3419.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Accurate extraction of soil and plant water for stable isotope analysis remains a methodological challenge in ecohydrology, particularly due to isotopic biases introduced by heating or selective pore-water extraction in conventional techniques. This study developed and evaluated a cryogenic airtight vapor extraction (CRAVE) method from soil and vegetation samples at ambient temperature within a recirculating vapor-liquid pathway. This approach avoids heating-induced non-equilibrium effects and reduces matrix-dependent artifacts and organic contamination, thereby facilitating direct comparison of isotopic compositions between soil and plant water. The results demonstrate that CRAVE-derived isotopic signatures align with both cryogenic vacuum distillation (CVD) and suction lysimeter (SL) benchmarks. However, systematic deviations were observed based on specific matrix properties. For xylem water, the d&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;H offset between CRAVE and CVD was strongly modulated by gravimetric water content (dry-weight basis), with CVD exhibiting greater hydrogen isotope depletion under low-moisture conditions (&amp;lt; 0.8 g&amp;middot;g&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;). For soils, the isotopic divergence between CRAVE and CVD was driven primarily by soil texture, with offsets increasing as clay content and depth increased (&lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt; = 0.82&amp;ndash;0.94), where CVD-extracted bulk water became depleted progressively in both &amp;delta;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;H and &amp;delta;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;O relative to the mobile-capillary pool captured by SL and CRAVE. The Rayleigh-based framework provides a physically grounded means to reconstruct source-water isotope values from condensate measurements; its potential use for mobile&amp;ndash;immobile partitioning should, however, be treated as a future application pending targeted validation. Overall, CRAVE represents a promising ambient-temperature extraction method for tracing water partitioning and source-uptake dynamics within the soil&amp;ndash;plant&amp;ndash;atmosphere continuum.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="35"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42561144297</award-id>
<award-id>42030506</award-id>
<award-id>W2541025</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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