The Inselberg camp was established in 1986. It owes its name to the 411-m asl granite hill overtopping it. This site is ca 8 km North of the Arataye river. The camp itself is an ensemble of traditional ’carbets’, including one for the laboratory and one for the kitchen. The maximum housing capacity is 20 people.

The Pararé camp was created in 1995. It is located along the Arataye river, just downstream from a rapid (’saut’) that is difficult to pass by boat. The camp itself is an ensemble of traditional ’carbets’, including one for the laboratory and one for the kitchen. The maximum housing capacity is 18 people.

The COPAS project (Canopy Operating Permanent Acces System) is a canopy-access system of a novel type. Three 45-m poles have been set up spaced about 180 m from each other in a triangular shape. They are linked through cables above the canopy. A one-person seat is hung to the system and motors permit the passenger to travel in three dimensions of space. The three towers represent a total footprint of ca. 1.5 ha. (Forecast date of operation : 2014)

The Nouragues Ecological Research Station is a scientific station managed by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. It is located at the heart of a tropical rain forest, in the Nouragues Natural Reserve, French Guiana. It is a privileged equipment for the study of the functioning of tropical forests and their biodiversity. The Nouragues station is organized around two permanent camps (Inselberg camp and Pararé camp), 8 km away from each other. These two sites are equipped to welcome scientists from a few days to several months.

Located in the French Pyrenees, the Metatron comprises 48 units, each stretches 100-m² * 2-m height, where we can manipulate climatic conditions (temperature, humidity or solar radiation). Units are connected by corridors allowing migration from one environment to another. The Metatron focuses on climatic effects on population dynamics, especially in the framework of the global warming and fragmentation.

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/

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.