THE MEKONG RIVER BASIN

The Mekong River Basin: Ecohydrological Complexity from Catchment to Coast, Volume Three presents real facts, data and predictions for quantifying human-induced changes throughout the Mekong watershed, including its estuaries and coasts, and proposes solutions to decrease or mitigate the negative effect and enable sustainable development. This is the first work to link socio–ecological interaction study over the whole Mekong River basin through the lens of ecohydrology. Each chapter is written by a leading expert, with coverage on climate change, groundwater, land use, flooding drought, biodiversity and anthropological issues.

Human activities are enormous in the whole watershed and are still increasing throughout the catchment, with severe negative impacts on natural resources are emerging. Among these activities, hydropower dams, especially a series of 11 dams in China, are the most critical as they generate massive changes throughout the system, including in the delta and to the livelihoods of millions of people and they threaten sustainability.

• Presents an extensive collection of eco-hydrological changes in the river basin driven by both nature and anthropological factors
• Provides state of the art modeling, data analysis methodologies for complex socio-ecological complexity applied in the Mekong river basin
• Includes specific cases of ecohydrology in the river basin, especially from the Mekong delta

Dr. Hong Quan NGUYEN is currently an associate professor at the Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM). He is leading a newly established Institute for Circular Economy Development (ICED) and also is affiliated with socio-hydrology group at center of Water Management and Climate Change (WACC), Institute for Env. and Res. (IER), VNU-HCM. He has a special interest in solving environmental related issues based on inter/trans-disciplinary study and by a strong partnership among academia-industry-government. He has been working in water modeling (e.g. surface/ground- water modelling, saline intrusion, flood/drought, water pollution) in southern Vietnam over the past 15 years and expanded his expertise in other disciplines e.g. climate change adaptation/mitigation, circular economy, socio-ecological system, sustainability science. He has published actively at various (inter-)national journals, conferences/workshops including (co-)authored 35 ISI/Scopus indexed articles in the last 5 years.

Dr. Heiko Apel is senior scientist in the section Hydrology of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geoscience in Potsdam, the national public research centre for Geosciences in Germany. His interests and specializations are in flood risk and drought research and hydrological processes, particularly sediment dynamics, and hydraulic modelling. He has led several research projects in the Mekong Delta for the last 13 years, dealing with a wide range of scientific topics: flood hazard and the impact of climate change and human activities, river-floodplain-groundwater interactions, sediment dynamics in the Mekong delta with future projections, salinity intrusion modelling, and drought/salinity intrusion forecasting. He (co-)authored 22 international peer reviewed papers publishing the results of these projects in the Mekong Delta and the Lower Mekong Basin.

Dr. Quang Bao Le is a senior scientist on Agricultural Livelihood Systems and Operational Integrated System Research at International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). Before joining ICARDA he was a senior postdoctoral researcher (2009-2011) and Senior Scientist (2011-2015) at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. With a coupled human–environment system perspective, for the past 15 years his research has focused on the development and application of human-environment system methodologies to integrate multi-disciplinary scientific expertise with societal decision-making processes to foster sustainable agricultural livelihood systems. He received Breheny Prize 2013 for the best paper in Environment and Planning B journal and the Awards of Swiss Academy of Arts and Sciences 2013 for "Distinguished Achievement" in transdisciplinary research. He published more than 90 reviewed publications and supervised or co-supervised successfully 13 graduate students.

Minh Tu Nguyen is a senior researcher at the Institute for Circular Economy Development (ICED), Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City (VNU - HCM). He holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences at the University of Bonn and a master’s degree in Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, both in Germany. His main research interests focus on drivers of agricultural changes, resilience assessment of social-ecological systems facing natural hazards, and application of the circular economy concept and principles in agriculture. Dr. Nguyen is author/co-author of several journal articles in Environmental Science and Policy, Ecology and Society, Journal of Flood Risk Management, and Agricultural Water Management.

Dr. Venkataramana Sridhar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. Dr. Sridhar earned his Ph.D. in Biosystems Engineering at Oklahoma State University in 2001. Dr. Sridhar is a hydrologist and conducts modeling research to understand the impact of climate change on hydrology and water resources, water management, drought and flood modeling. His projects inform improved solutions to avoid water demand conflicts and improve potential yields from agriculture, ensuring a vibrant agricultural industry and enhancing food security. He has published more than 160 research articles, including 75 peer-reviewed journal articles and 85 technical papers at conferences and several invited talks nationally and internationally. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Idaho and Nebraska and a member of American Society of Civil Engineers, and Diplomate of American Academy of Water Resources Engineers