As global issues, like water scarcity and drought induced tree mortality, become increasingly critical, it is becoming apparent that no field on its own can provide a solution. The field of ecology has made contributions to our understanding by showing how ecosystems adapt to change through the interactions of living organisms with their physical environment. However, the idea of physical environment has been generally limited to some combination of isolated factors like temperature, soil moisture or precipitation. In other disciplines, there has been a growing interest in a much more complex physical environment where the atmosphere, the subsurface (soil and rocks) and living organisms interact through the movement of water. This near-surface environment has been coined the Critical Zone and provides us with an interdisciplinary framework under which we can address environmental challenges, including the aforementioned ones. This symposium will present recent advances in plant-environment interactions in the Critical Zone from the perspectives of geoscientists, while highlighting the key points of intersection with ecology. These talks will include both theoretical (operational models) and practical approaches. The overarching goal of the session is to highlight the importance of a transdisciplinary view of the “physical environment” in ecology that includes hydrologic, geochemical and geomorphic processes. Through these talks and the discussions that follow, we hope to stimulate collaboration and conversation across disciplines.