The CZO Multiscale TROPIcal CatchmentS (M-TROPICS) consists in the merging of two previously-existing CZOs: BVET (India and Cameroon) and MSEC (Laos, Vietnam, Thailand). The CZO M-TROPICS is included in OZCAR, the French contribution to the international CZO initiative
The CZO M-TROPICS provides the international scientific community with unique decennial time series of climatic, hydrological and geochemical variables in tropical environments.
More specifically, the CZO M-TROPICS aims at (1) determining the fluxes of water, of inorganic and organic matter present in solution (major anions and cations, carbon) and in suspension (particulate organic carbon); (2) proposing budgets of chemical weathering and physical erosion; and (3) evaluating the impact of global change (land-use, climate) upon the above parameters.
Its strengths are (1) multiscale approaches, both in space (from micro-plot to catchment and larger river basins) and in time (from hourly to multi-decennial time-series); and (2) multidisciplinary approach, currently involving hydrology, biogeochemistry, soil science, agronomy, remote sensing, ecology, experimentation and modelling.