Many mountainous regions of the humid tropics experience serious soil erosion following rapid changes in land use. In northern Lao PDR, the replacement of traditional crops by tree plantations, such as teak trees, has led to a dramatic increase in floods and soil loss and to the degradation of basic soil ecosystem services. In this […]
Recent intensification in climate change have resulted in the rise of hydrological extreme events. Hydrological processes modelling at high temporal resolution is required to better understand flow patterns at catchment scale. A physically-based model called Hydrological Simulated Program-FORTRAN and two deep learning-based models were implemented to model surface runoff and sub-surface flow in the tropical […]
The Hoabinhian is a distinctive lithic techno-complex of mainland and Island Southeast Asia. Knowledge of its relationships with key patterns of technological change at a global scale has progressed over the last two decades. However, our understanding of the Hoabinhian as an indicator of evolution during Prehistory can be substantially enhanced by examiningits regional and […]
The French Critical Zone research infrastructure, OZCAR-RI, gathers 20 long-term observatories monitoring and sampling various compartments of the critical zone. Each observatory developed its own data management and distribution systems. The paper presents the common information system Theia/OZCAR IS that was built to make in situ observation FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). Within M-TROPICS, Norbert […]
Tropical montane areas of Southeast Asia are exposed to high-intensity rainfall during the monsoon period. This is particularly problematic in areas where soils on steep slopes are cultivated as it can lead to heavy runoff, high soil erosion, and water pollution. The objective of this study, performed in the Houay Pano catchment (M-TROPICS/MSEC in Laos), […]
M-TROPICS is one of the 21 CZOs part of OZCAR, the French network of environmental observatories aiming at monitoring the various compartments of the critical zone over the long term. The position paper of OZCAR has been published in Vadose Zone Journal and is available here (open access).
Headwaters are hotspots of carbon dioxide (CO2) evasion from rivers. While emerging evidence suggests that groundwater contributes disproportionately to CO2 in headwater streams, the processes of CO2 delivery to streams and subsequent evasion to the atmosphere remain largely unknown. This study, partly based on CO2 measurements along the Houay Pano stream in Northern Laos (M-TROPICS/MSEC), […]
Groundwater contribution to streamflow sustains biodiversity and enhances ecosystem services, especially under monsoon-driven climate where stream baseflow is often the only available water resource during the dry season. This study assessed how land use change influences streamflow and its groundwater contribution in the small headwater catchment of Houay Pano (M-TROPICS/MSEC) in the lower Mekong basin, […]
Land use change from annual crops to commercial tree plantations can modify flow and transport processes at the watershed scale, including the fate and transport of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), such as Escherichia coli. The objective of this study was to provide a comprehensive assessment of the impact of land use change on microbial transfer […]