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Photos
Photos
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News
2023
May 25, 2023
Job offer : PostDoc position as part of the TropSEDs project.
The researcher will be modelling anthropogenic perturbation of carbon fluxes from land to ocean in the Kasaï Basin. This job will be based in Belgium, both UCLouvain and ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles).
April 05, 2023
Lissie De Groots PhD work on tropical soil erosion in the Kasaï Basin was featured in the News of the World Food System Center (WFSC) of ETH Zurich.
Read article
January 24, 2023
Kidinda et al. show in a recently published article how the chemical index of alteration can be used in highly weathered soils of the humid tropics to study the influence of geochemical properties on microbial nutrient acquisition.
Read article
2022
August 14, 2022
Carbon allocation and net primary productivity of forests and soils in tropical montane ecosystems along the Albertine Rift System are driven by soil fertility and the geochemistry of the parent material. This was shown by Bukombe et al. at Augsburg University.
June 15, 2022
Young secondary forests of the Congo Basin have a conservative N cycle despite of high atmospheric N depositions. This has been shown by a new study of Makelele. et al at Ghen University.
January 17, 2022
A new article published by our observatory in Nature Communications shows extremely high methane emissions in flooded tropical forests of the Congo Basin whereas relatively low nitrous oxide emissions from all studied forests types were measured; which could be due to the direct conversion to N2.
January 3, 2022
New global soil temperature maps were published containing data from our sensors in the Congo Basin.
2021
October 28, 2021
Behind the paper - have a look behind the scenes of the publication on nitrous oxide emissions from forest soils of the Congo Basin by Gallarotti et al. on the Nature Microbiology community website.
October 27, 2021
Filling a continental gap: a soil infrared library for central Africa was published together with a regional prediction analysis facilitating soil analysis for the critical but understudied humid tropics of Africa.
October 15, 2021
In highly weathered soils of the Congo Basin, Bukombe et al. found that parent material had a large impact on soil chemistry, which further controlled microbial and carbon dynamics.
October 11, 2021
New article on mapping canopy heights in the dense tropical forests of the Congo basin using low-cost UAV-derived photogrammetric point clouds and machine learning approaches published by Zhang et al. in Remote Sensing.
August 26, 2021
A new CBO-led study that found that high phosphorus in African tropical forests is sourced from fires and scales with canopy complexity. These results highlight how older and more complex forests have higher surface areas for dry deposition to settle onto and thus trap more phosphorus.
August 18, 2021
The open access database TropSOC Database v1.0 including spatial and temporal explicit data on soil, vegetation, environmental properties and land management in the Eastern Congo Basin and the East African Rift Valley System is ready for download.
August 3, 2021
A case study was published by SonTek about their instruments used for discharge measurements of the Ruki river.
June 9, 2021
Rice production for improving food security while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing deforestation in the wetlands of the Equateur province - an inside look at the Woodwell Climate Research Center project.
May 25, 2021
A study of Gallarotti et al. on N2O fluxes in lowland and montane forests of the Congo Basin was published in ISME journal.
May 6, 2021
A portrait of Laurent Kidinda and his PhD project on soil organic carbon dynamics and microbial activity along geomorphic gradients in the Eastern Congo Basin published on the Congolese the news portal Alternance.cd.
April 15, 2021
A new publication in Nature Geoscience showing the importance of night-time CO2 emissions from rivers featuring data collected by CBO researchers from headwater streams in Democratic Republic of Congo.
March 18, 2021
Spatial and seasonal patterns of rainfall erosivity in the Lake Kivu region: Insights from a meteorological observatory network: article published by Bagalwa et al. in Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment
January 28, 2021
Soil Nutrient Depletion and Tree Functional Composition Shift Following Repeated Clearing in Secondary Forests of the Congo Basin: article published by Bauters et al. in Ecosystems
2020
July 24, 2020
Du feu à l'eau: source and flux of dissolved black carbon from the Congo River: article by Drake et al. published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles
April 27, 2020
Century-long apparent decrease in intrinsic water-use efficiency with no evidence of progressive nutrient limitation in African tropical forests: article by Bauters et al. published in Global Change Biology
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April 20, 2020
Seasonality, drivers, and isotopic composition of soil CO2 fluxes from tropical forests of the Congo Basin: article by Baumgartner et al. under review in Biogeosciences Discussions
March 04, 2020
Alerte/La séquestration de carbone a atteint un pic dans les forêts tropicales en Afrique et en Amazonie: An article published in Le Potentiel
March 04, 2020
Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests: A new publication in nature
January 02, 2020
Environmental research in the heart of Africa: The Congo Biogeochemistry Observatory; A profile paper published in Open Access Government
2019
November 04, 2019
Land‐use controls on carbon biogeochemistry in lowland streams of the Congo Basin: New paper in Global Change Biology
October 11, 2019
The website of CAFRINAT (Centre of Excellence for the African Great Lakes' Natural Capital) is launched
"CAFRINAT is an international centre of excellence for African Great Lakes Natural Capital and was founded at the Faculty of Bio-Science Engineering of Ghent University. The general research, education and societal goals of CAFRINAT focus on the sustainable management of natural capital in areas of conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa."
Find more information on the website!
August 12, 2019
Understanding carbon cycling in tropical soil systems: New publication in EU Research
Dr Sebastian Doetterl (Assistant Professor for Soil Resources, ETH Zurich) explains how understanding carbon cycling in tropical soil systems will inform models of earth system dynamics and help farmers in the region to use land effectively.
(EU Research SUM19/P37)
July 12, 2019
Mobilization of aged and biolabile soil carbon by tropical deforestation: New paper in Nature Geoscience
See media responses
May 2, 2019
Matti Barthel got an award for one of his DRC photographs by SNF
Matti Barthel (Technical staff, ETH Zurich) got an award in SNSF Scientific Image Competition in the category "Locations and instruments". His photo "Nyiragongo" was taken during an expedition to the Nyiragongo volcano in Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Nyiragongo. Photo: Matti Barthel
Copyright: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
January 25, 2019
AGU’s 2018 Congo Basin Chapman Conference presentation videos now online
A collection of talks and other material presented at the AGU Chapman Conference on Hydrologic Research in the Congo Basin is now online. The conference was held at the Carnegie Institute of Science in Washington DC, September 25-27 2018.
January 24, 2019
CongoFlux project is now on Instagram
Follow the project on Instagram
January 7, 2019
Contrasting nitrogen fluxes in African tropical forests of the Congo Basin: New paper in Ecological Monographs
The paper published in Ecological Monographs focused on three main question:
"(1) How does the abiotic environment affect N cycling in tropical forests by comparing montane and lowland forest?
(2) How does forest type within each geographical location affect the N cycle, i.e., what is the variability that can be expected from a change in biotic forest composition?
(3) How does the N cycle of tropical forests in the Congo basin compare to the better‐documented South American and Southeast Asian tropical forests?"
2018
December 12, 2018
Enhancing Resilience in Food Systems: Project Newsletter
The Sustainable Agroecosystem Group, chaired by Prof. Johan Six, and their partners were awarded funding by the Global Programme Food Security of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation for their project “The rural-urban nexus: Establishing a nutrient loop to improve city region food system resilience (RUNRES)”.
November 16, 2018
TAHMO is providing crucial data for an international consortium on research in the Congo Basin
The Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) is providing crucial data for researchers of the Congo Biogeochemistry Observatory on research related to biogeochemical cycling of carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen in the Congo Basin.
September 21, 2018
Carbon cycling and the role of soils in understanding the response of the biosphere to Global Change
Dr. Sebastian Doetterl (Assistant Professor, ETH Zurich) gave a presentation at the AMS Beyond 2020 Symposium, ETH Zurich, 2018.
March 28, 2018
A high fire-derived nitrogen deposition in the Congo Basin
Behind the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Marijn Bauters (Post-doc, Ghent University) share his experiences about working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and explains the importance of doing research there.
February 8, 2018
FSU researchers: Savanna fires pump Central African forests full of nitrogen
New article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read media response on Florida State University News.
2014
September 9, 2014
Sustainability in the heart of darkness
"The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is mostly known for its social, economic, and political instability. Does it make sense then for me to focus my research on sustainable agriculture and the role of the Congo River Basin in the global carbon cycle?" Johan Six (Professor of Sustainable Agroecosystems, ETH Zurich) explains why it is important to have research projects in the DRC.