The site comprises 4 km stretch of a complete alluvial floodplane managed as a private nature reserve some 10 kilometer upstream of the city of Leuven. Since 1990, human interference in the river channel has stopped resulting in a spontaneous meander evolution and roughening of the river channel. This has induced frequent (e.g. yearly) inundations, thus avoiding flood damage in the city of Leuven downstream and this without creating the usual storm basins.

Dong Cao is a small agricultural catchment (47 ha) of northern Vietnam, located at 70 km from Hanoi, in a sloping land environment. The objective is to monitor the impacts of land use changes (from cassava to fodder and tree plantations) and possible climate changes upon hydrological and sedimentary fluxes and budgets. The catchment has an elevation of 125 m to 485 m and slopes range from 15 to 120%. Monitoring devices include an automatic meteorological station, and weirs to monitor discharge, suspended sediment and bedload. More information is available on https://mtropics.obs-mip.fr/ and in the following paper: Valentin, C., et al., 2008. Runoff and sediment losses from 27 upland catchments in Southeast Asia: Impact of rapid land use changes and conservation practices. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 128, 225–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2008.06.004

The site established in 1958. We can still find in the site the remains of terraces from the Nabatean agriculture runoff. The main research topics that being studied in the site are: biodiversity, climate change, runoff hydrology

Krofdorf Forest hydrological research area 4 catchments: A1 (9 ha), A2 (20 ha), B1 (11 ha), B2 (14 ha)

Forest Hydrological Research Basin Lange Bramke

Solling Experimental Forest

Houay Pano is a small agricultural catchment (60 ha) of northern Lao PDR, 10 km from the UNESCO world heritage city of Luang Phrabang, in a sloping land environment monitored since 1998. The objective is to monitor the impact of land use changes from annual crops (upland rice, Job’s tear and maize, cultivated with slash and burn system) to perennial (teak trees), and of climate changes upon hydrological and sedimentary fluxes and budgets, along with water quality (including microbial contamination). The mean slope is 48%. Alfisol, Ultisol, Entisol developed on shale and shist. Monitoring devices include an automatic meteorological station, weirs to monitor discharge from nested catchments, suspended sediment, and bedload, piezometers, and electrical resistivity. More information is available on https://mtropics.obs-mip.fr/ and in the following papers: Boithias, L., et al., 2021. The Multiscale TROPIcal CatchmentS critical zone observatory M-TROPICS dataset II: land use, hydrology and sediment production monitoring in Houay Pano, northern Lao PDR. Hydrol. Process. 35, e14126. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14126 Ribolzi, O., et al., 2017. From shifting cultivation to teak plantation: effect on overland flow and sediment yield in a montane tropical catchment. Sci. Rep. 7, 3987. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04385-2 Valentin, C., et al., 2008. Runoff and sediment losses from 27 upland catchments in Southeast Asia: Impact of rapid land use changes and conservation practices. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 128, 225–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2008.06.004 More information is available on https://mtropics.obs-mip.fr/ and in the following papers: Boithias, L., et al., 2021. The Multiscale TROPIcal CatchmentS critical zone observatory M-TROPICS dataset II: land use, hydrology and sediment production monitoring in Houay Pano, northern Lao PDR. Hydrol. Process. 35, e14126. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14126 Ribolzi, O., et al., 2017. From shifting cultivation to teak plantation: effect on overland flow and sediment yield in a montane tropical catchment. Sci. Rep. 7, 3987. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04385-2 Valentin, C., et al., 2008. Runoff and sediment losses from 27 upland catchments in Southeast Asia: Impact of rapid land use changes and conservation practices. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 128, 225–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2008.06.004

The Yucheng Comprehensive Experiment Station (YCES) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is located at the irrigation district of the Yellow River Basin in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, also called North China Plain. Physiognomy is characterized as hinterland covered mainly by fluvo-aquic soil (Fluvisol or cambisal) and salinized fluvo-aquic soil in the Yellow River Alluvial Plain. This region is dominated by warm-temperate semi-humid monsoon climate with ample energy and water resources. Historically, natural disasters such as drought, waterlogging, salinization, and wind erosion frequently occurred, resulting in vulnerable ecological environment and low grain production. Integrated improvements and managements were deployed in last several decades, and this region has become suitable for planting winter wheat, corn, cotton, and soybean with high yields in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain. Research objectives and contents Objectives:  regional sustainable agriculture  rational utilization of natural resources such as water, land, climate, biomass, etc. Contents:  conducting long-term observations and experiments  understanding the mechanism of energy transfer and mass cycle in farmlands  developing models from point to regional scales  improving and developing instruments and measurement methods  improving agro-ecosystem managements  demonstrating research results and technologies Research achievements: Outstanding research results and massive experiment data have been achieved at the YCES. The achievements cover research fields of farmland evapotranspiration, crop water use, water transfer mechanism, experimental remote sensing techniques, regional agriculture demonstration, and technology transfer. More than 1,000 papers, 15 monograph books, and 5 data sets have been published. A number of awards were granted by national, CAS, and international academic organizations, for example,  Agriculture Prize granted by the Third World Academy of Sciences  Science and Technology Progress Award by Chinese Academy of Sciences  National Top Award of Science and Technology Progress

DHS has well protected monsoon evergreen broadleaf forest and its successional forests. Therefore, DHS is an ideal place to research successional processes and patterns of subtropical forest ecosystems, as well as to restore or rehabilitate the degraded forest ecosystems in subtropics of China.

In the framework of TERENO "terrestrial observatories" are set up in selected German regions for climate and landuse change studies. The Harz/Central German Lowland Observatory is one of these observatories that are equipped with a combination of in situ measuring instruments and ground-based, airborne and satellite-borne remote sensing techniques. Additionally a network of biodiversity observation plots is installed. Within the Harz/Central German Lowland observatory the climate feedback experiment SoilCan using a lysimeter network will be realized. Soil monoliths with different vegetation are transplanted along the existing natural gradient in temperature and precipitation within the four TERENO observatories. Within the Harz/Central German Lowland observatory three main intensive test sites have been selected: Sauerbach, 27 ha, forest/agriculture, Schäferbach, 27 ha, agriculture, Selke Catchment, forest/agriculture. Instrumentation and surveys enable: Dense Soil Moisture Monitoring, Groundwater Monitoring, Runoff and Solute Monitoring, Eddy covariance tower (CO2, NO2, CH4, available end 2011), Geophysical Monitoring (ERT, GPR, EM), Airborne Monitoring using Hyperspectrum Imagery (flight campaigns), Soil Respiration Monitoring (available end 2011), Climate station, Deposition station (available end 2011), Biodiversity Assessment, DTS-observation of groundwater-surface water interactions (Distributed Temperature Sensing, using fiberoptics and temperaturprobes), Vadose Zone Monitoring System (in-situ soil water budget observation), Rainscanner (small weather radar, available end 2011). At the GCEF in Bad Lauchstädt opportunities will be given to manipulate climate change and land environment, from which visiting scientists may benefit. This infrastructure is available since 2013. The monitoring, observation, and research activities within the Harz/Central German Lowland Observatory are organized in four main platforms: 1. Hydrological Platform: catchment of the river Bode (shape on the map) 2. Biodiversity Platform (green dots on the map) 3. Floodplain Platform (pink dots on the map) 4. Urban Platform: the city of Leipzig as focus area