The National Observation Service (SNO) HYBAM on Amazon rivers, created in 2003, is financially supported by IRD, INSU, OMP Toulouse, and partner structures in Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Congo. Since 2016, HYBAM has been a member of the “French network of Critical Zone Observatories: Research and Applications” (OZCAR).

SNO HYBAM, led by GET, operates in 8 countries and involves a network of 17 partners in the South, associating national hydrological services (INAMHI Ecuador, SENAMHI Peru, SENAMHI Bolivia, ANA Brazil, DEAL French Guyana, Office de l’Eau-French Guyana, SCEVN Brazzaville), national research centres (IVIC Venezuela, IGP Peru, CIIFEN Ecuador) and one or more universities per country concerned (UNALM Lima, UMSA La Paz, UFAM Manaus, UnB Brasilia, UFF Niterói, UCV Caracas, UMNg Brazzaville).

SNO’s mission is to 1) create hydrological, sedimentary and geochemical data by combining in situ observations, spatial observations and laboratory analyses; 2) make this information available to the scientific community via a regularly updated web portal;  3) conduct training activities for the technical and scientific community of the South working on water resources in the Amazon region; 4) participate in the analysis and enhancement of the data produced through publications, animation activities and research programmes, within which masters and doctoral degrees (students from the North and the South) are carried out.

The organisation chart is structured by the 8 national work sites of the observatory, whose responsibility is most often shared between 1 to 3 people from technical and/or scientific institutions. These managers ensure the proper functioning of sample collection and ensure the day-to-day institutional relations necessary for the functioning of the network in each country. The samples, depending on the parameters and countries, are processed in a series of national laboratories. For the most complex geochemical measurements, the processing is centralized at the Geosciences Environnement Toulouse (GET) laboratory in France. The data are then criticized and stored in a database unique to the project. Various software packages are available free of charge to assist in the analysis of the results obtained.