In response to the global demand for food and raw materials, mountainous areas of the humid tropics are undergoing rapid and extensive land-use (LU) change which frequently induce problems of soil loss from cultivated areas, increased sediment delivery to downstream rivers and, concomitantly, surface water pollution.
DinBuam will focus on mobilization and spread faecal pathogenic bacteria (FPB) because of their relevance to public health in remote rural regions of developing countries. Headwater wetlands (HW) are focal points of water pathways and constitute filters for FPB. Yet, during extreme rainfall they may switch from acting as traps to sources of FPB. In this context, DinBuam proposes a stakeholder-based approach to preserve or restore ecosystem services of HW, which are very little studied and for which adequate management policies are missing.
The central idea of DinBuam is to assess whether HW can be used as sentinels of sustainable land and water use and contamination by FPB. The project encompasses 6 interconnected work packages: (1) Coordination, management, communication, awareness & dissemination; (2) HW socio environmental profiling & mapping; (3) environmental processes analysis; (4) multi-scale modelling; (5) citizen science and low-cost sensors; (6) stakeholderbased participative approach.
The main expected outcome of DinBuam is to propose a systemic approach that will effectively assist with the sustainable management of both HW and of land upstream from HW, through soil-friendly agricultural production strategies. These strategies will be co-constructed by a team of stakeholders involving: village farmers, the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture of Laos (DALaM), NEPL National Park Management Unit and non-governmental organisation (WCS-Laos), an infectious disease laboratory (LOMWRU), 5 French joint research units (GET, iEES-Paris, LSCE, CESSMA and CESBIO) and three start-ups (GLobEO, e-biom, MounoyDEV).
PhD-Post-docs-Jobs
DinBuam is hiring a post-doc ! Join the DinBuam and M-TROPICS team with this challenging research experience about hydrological modelling and participatory processes at Géosciences Environnement Toulouse and in partnership with the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR. More details in English and application at IRD, deadline Nov. 29 !
Events
Sensors capable of accurately measuring water level exist on the market, but they are generally expensive, fragile and ill-suited to the aggressive conditions encountered in rivers, particularly in the inter-tropical zone. A self-contained, float-controlled water level gauge based on visible laser Time-of-Flight (ToF) technology, designed as an integrated device for automatically measuring and recording water […]
Conferences
Olivier Ribolzi, PI of the project, presented DinBuam’s progress at the 3rd OZCAR TERENO International Conference, held in Paris, France, from September 30 to October 2. Five other presentations have been given about the outcomes of the project.
Articles
In this paper Dr Pierret and colleagues present the design, construction and performance of a self-contained float-controlled water level gauge for monitoring water levels in streams and small rivers. This device is inexpensive (cost of about EUR 220), easy to build (no electronics skills or specialized tools required; assembled in a few hours) and straightforward […]
Articles
Considering the significant soil losses in teak plantations during heavy rains, IRD researchers (UMR GET and iEES-Paris) and their Laotian (DALaM and NUoL) and Cambodian (ITC) partners sought to measure the efficacy of grassed ‘buffer’ zones on surface runoff and soil loss downstream of these plantations. In South-East Asia, teak plantations are often established on […]
Events
Do Anh Huy defended his Master’s thesis on September 18, dealing with the “Application of remote sensing for land use and wetlands mapping in Laos”, performed within the DinBuam ANR project and supervised by Alexandre Bouvet (CESBIO), Olivier Ribolzi (GET) and Pham Duc Binh (USTH), hosted at CESBIO and funded by the AST Zone Critique […]