The Mexican Carbon Program (PMC) arose from the need to establish a mechanism to coordinate national research efforts related to the physical, geochemical, biological and social aspects of the carbon cycle.

Knowledge of the carbon cycle in their country and its relationship with Global Change (CG) are indispensable to solve many questions that science and society demand. Knowing the state that is mainly carbon, within the ecosystems of the country is a priority. Not only in terms of the contribution of Mexico and its different sectors to the total emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), but also because one of the consequences of these emissions, climate change, will affect especially nations like theirs.

This is how the PMC seeks to coordinate the scientific activities related to the carbon cycle studies carried out in Mexico, to serve as a scientific counterpart of Mexico for similar programs in other countries, to develop and promote scientific research regarding the carbon cycle in Mexico. country, and systematize scientific information about carbon.

History

The background of the PMC began with the participation of Dr. Víctor J. Jaramillo (CIEco, UNAM) in a meeting of the North American Carbon Program in the City of Boulder, Colorado, USA in 2001. There, it was proposed to create a Trinational Program between Canada, the United States and Mexico on studies of the C cycle. The first directory of Mexican researchers studying the C cycle was also generated, with the idea of ​​convening a National Workshop to define research priorities with the support of the NACP . However, the workshop was not carried out as a result of the attacks in New York in 2001.

In 2003 in the city of Morelia, Dr. Víctor J. Jaramillo convenes a Satellite Meeting within the Land Open Science Conforence, IGBP-IHDP with the objective of starting the organization of the PMC. On that occasion, a working committee was formed by Dr. Ben de Jong (ECOSUR), Dr. Víctor J. Jaramillo (CIEco, UNAM) and Dr. Arturo Muhlia (CIBNOR). Subsequently, the National Institute of Ecology (INE) of SEMARNAT convened two meetings during 2004, one held on October 4, with a limited number of national researchers and the second on November 18, with a larger number of researchers as a result of having improved the directory of the national scientific community. In this last meeting the one was created, whose main objective was to structure,

The First Meeting for the Conformation of the PMC was held in November 2005 in Mexico City, financed by the INE-SEMARNAT. This meeting was attended by 51 researchers from 17 Mexican institutions. The result was the formal creation of the PMC.

As of that date, the work of the Scientific Committee has focused on the organization of the Program, culminating in the First International Symposium of the C in Mexico in October 2009 in the city of Ensenada, BC. Parallel to this work, the scientific committee has also been participating in the creation of the trinational program CarboNA (Mexico, the United States and Canada).