The SOERE-ACBB is a set of three platforms involving long-term (> 20 yrs) field experiments initiated in 2005-2009. Long-term studies are carried out on biogeochemical cycles and functional biodiversity (flora and fauna) in agroecosystems as affected by land use, management practices and climate change. The SOERE-ACBB covers three land use and climatic regions in France: temporary grassland, permanent grassland and arable land. The main hypothesis tested is that the evolution of the systems in response to anthropogenic disturbances and land use management is strongly linked to the dynamics of quantitative and qualitative composition of soil organic matter (SOM) and vegetation diversity. SOERE-ACBB is unique in enabling analysis of feedback loops between management practices, biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity by offering opportunities for simultaneous study of interactions between SOM dynamics, microbial communities and vegetation under various management practices of agroecosystems. The platforms are designed to characterize the trajectories of key variables of the systems throughout time as changes occur – elements such as carbon, phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen and the diversity of plants and organisms in the soil – over years or decades. The platform’s instrumentation continuously quantifies a broad range of physical, chemical and biological variables: climate forcing variables, physical conditions in soil, water fluxes and quality, carbon and nitrogen storage in soil, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), floral, faunal and microbial diversity. The ability to monitor quantitative and qualitative changes in SOM over time will allow scientists to relate the overall evolution to energy balance and resource elements. Although SOERE-ACBB is a national infrastructure, scientists from other countries are welcome and can benefit from the acquired experience and knowledge. SOERE-ACBB has been involved in many international projects such as the Global Research Alliance and the International soil warming experiment network and is still a partner in a number of ongoing projects such as ExpeER, AnimalChange, Ecofinders and Multisward.

Together with the Ecotron de Montpellier, the Ecotron IleDeFrance is part of the distributed “Infrastructure de Recherche” (IR) managed and supported by CNRS and Ecole normale supérieure since 2010. Ecotrons enable highly controlled manipulation and measurement of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, communities and ecosystems with unprecedented power and quality. On a technological side, an Ecotron is defined as a device allowing the precise conditioning of the environment and the detailed monitoring of states and activities of organisms and ecosystems. Ecotrons allow studying a range of small to medium sized biological systems from relatively complex ecosystems (e.g., intact samples of grasslands) to model plant and animal species up to reconstructed ecosystems (e.g., artificial life support models). Ecotrons can thus be used to confine ecosystems from in natura sites and therefore conduct detailed, controlled experiments on natural ecosystems. The Ecotron IleDeFrance is based on technologies implemented in the Ecolab equipment and developed primarily in collaboration with the French private company Cesbron. The Ecolab is a modular structure coupling together three environmental chambers and one laboratory room. Each environmental chamber can be independently controlled accurately for realistic climate and atmospheric conditions (temperature, humidity, CO2 and O2 content, lighting) with unprecedented power and accuracy. A stainless steel lysimeter with temperature-control on three independent levels makes it possible to incubate both terrestrial and aquatic systems and simulate thermal gradients. Artificial light can be provided with several technologies to adapt to the needs and constraints of each project. The Ecotron IleDeFrance combines several Ecolabs into a network making it possible to run powerful, replicated experiments.

An experimental research infrastructure dedicated to the study of ecosystems, organisms and biodiversity in the context of environmental changes. The Ecotron is a laboratory of the Institute of Ecology and Environment (CNRS) open to national and international scientists’ consortia in the fields of ecology, population and community biology and agronomy. The Ecotron allows a precise conditioning of the environment and on line measurements of states and activities (fluxes) of organisms and ecosystems at various scales. This facility bridges the gap between the complexity of in natura studies and the simplicity of laboratory experiments. The research topics to be addressed in the Ecotron include fundamental questions about biogeochemical cycles and the role of biodiversity in ecosystem processes, but tests of ecological theories as well as the applied aspects of optimizing ecosystem services are also desirable projects. http://www.ecotron.cnrs.fr/index.php/en/

The site comprises three distincts experimental set-ups: (1) a long-term (>10 years) partial throughfall exclusion experiment replicated three times and crossed with a thinning (-30% basal area) experiment aimed at simulating long-term precipitation decrease in accordance with climate change scenario for the Mediterranean area (-30% of precipitation), (2) a total rainfall exclusion experiment using a mobile roof has been set up to simulate extreme drought events and modify precipitation seasonality, and (3) an eddy-covariance flux tower running continuously since 2001 to measure seasonal variations in ecosystem functioning and year-to-year flux responses to drought and climate.

Rubberflux is a flux tower site aiming at providing a complete picture of CO2, water and energy budget of a rubber tree plantation using the eddy-covariance (EC) method combined with ground-based measurements of carbon/water stocks and flux among the different components of the ecosystem. This approach allows quantifying flux (NEE an ETR), partitioning them among tree organs, soil, understorey vegetation (etc.…), and eventually understanding the interactions with climate and the availability of soil resources (water, nutrients). This is a common approach to 3 other flux tower sites on tropical tree plantations managed by CIRAD’s researchers within the umbrella of the SOERE F-ORE-T network. The Rubberflux site is located in Thailand, about 140km east of Bangkok. It was set-up in 2006 in a 12 years rubber plantation of the Chachoengsao Rubber Research Centre (CRRC), a research facility of the Rubber Research Institute of Thailand (RRIT). The collaboration with CRRC staff has also permitted to implement studies on a chronosequence of rubber plantations. A CIRAD’s researcher has been permanently based in Thailand since then to ensure the functioning of the site in collaboration with the staff of CRRC and a research team from Kasetsart University (KU). The research works conducted on the Rubberflux site have been funded by CIRAD and KU with substantial contribution of the Thai Research Fund (TRF), the SOERE FORET and the French Embassy in Thailand.

The Estrées-Mons platform is dedicated to arable crops. It evaluates the effect of agricultural practices on C and N cycles in the soil-plant system and their interaction. Nitrate leaching, SOM evolution and GHG emissions (CO2, N2O) are monitored according to level of N intensification, crop residues export, soil tillage and legume frequency. The key issue is to understand how the wide variation in C and N inputs affects C and N cycles in more or less intensified systems.

The Lusignan platform is dedicated to temporary grassland. It has been designed to increase our understanding of the effects of management of mixed arable crops / grasslands systems on the environmental outputs. The main scientific issue concerns the effects of grassland duration and management on SOM dynamics (quantity and composition), GHG emissions (CO2, N2O), nutrient lixiviation and functional biodiversity.