The Congo Biogeochemical Observatory is an international consortium of researchers who study biogeochemical cycles (the pathways by which a key elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus move through the biotic and the abiotic compartments of Earth) in tropical Africa with focus on the Congo Basin. The Congo comprises the second largest swathe of tropical forest on Earth and faces mounting impacts from forest loss driven by shifting agriculture in concert with rapid human population growth. Given these accelerating impacts, we believe it is critical to study the biogeochemistry, ecology, and hydrology of this globally relevant yet largely understudied region.
Latest News
May 25, 2023
Job offer : PostDoc position as part of the TropSEDs project.
The researcher will be modelling anthropogenic perturbation of carbon fluxes from land to ocean in the Kasaï Basin.
April 05, 2023
Lissie De Groots PhD work on tropical soil erosion in the Kasaï Basin was featured in the News of the World Food System Center (WFSC) of ETH Zurich.
January 24, 2023
Kidinda et al. show in a recently published article how the chemical index of alteration can be used in highly weathered soils of the humid tropics to study the influence of geochemical properties on microbial nutrient acquisition. Read article
August 14, 2022
Carbon allocation and net primary productivity of forests and soils in tropical montane ecosystems along the Albertine Rift System are driven by soil fertility and the geochemistry of the parent material. This was shown by Bukombe et al. at Augsburg University.