The Barbeau research facility is located in a 33-ha forest located nearby the Fontainebleau forest. Barbeau is a mature sessile Oak stand with a Hornbeam understory. Since 2005, a monitoring facility has continuously been measuring : - the exchanges of carbon and water vapour between the forest ecosystem and the atmosphere (through the eddy covariance (EC) methodology, installed at the top of a 35-m “flux” tower, and through organ-scale photosynthesis and respiration set-ups; 30-min time step) - the atmosphere and forest microclimates (above and within the canopy, including incoming, absorbed and reflected radiations in several spectral bands, temperatures, humidity; 30-min time step) - key variables for understanding forest functioning (e.g. tree diameter / biomass growth and soil water content on a hourly to weekly basis, tree organs nutrient contents on a seasonal basis, leaf area index on an annual basis etc.) The instruments are co-located in a 2500-m² fenced area. However, the monitored “footprints” of sole instruments ranges from a few cm3soil (e.g. measurements of soil temperature) up to hectares (e.g. integrated measurements of co2 and h2o exchanges with the EC method). Beside this ensemble of continuously monitored variables, spatial surveys of the stand characteristics (e.g. tree growth, soil properties and C/N contents, soil respiration, leaf area) and large-scale experiments (e.g. 13C-enriched CO2 labelling) are regularly conducted in Barbeau.

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.