Headwater wetlands of tropical mountains:

ANR DinBuam

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).