Park, Edward

Once a key factor behind Vietnam's successful Doi Moi (restoration) economic reforms, the rice-centered agriculture of the VMD is now confronted by the new pressure of climate change impacts, including the intensifying salinity intrusion (SI). The SI menace has partly triggered the delta-wide emergence of new adaptive livelihood models across the VMD, including the prawn rice rotational crop (PRRC) that is arguably the most prominent. Research on the SI-driving factors is rapidly increasing in numbers, yet little synthesis has been done. Likewise, several studies have investigated the economic benefits of PRRC; less emphasis has placed on environmental and societal aspects, hence the questionable sustainability. This study, therefore, contributes a composite literature review, targeting two SI-related aspects: (i) key factors driving the intensification of SI in recent years across the Mekong Delta, and (ii) current understanding of the sustainability of PRRC. Results from the first review assignment highlight the four key SI-driving factors: riverbed incision, land subsidence, upstream dams, and sea-level rise. Also remarked are the critical absence of studies addressing multiple drivers and the need for a decoupling model to quantify the relative importance of each factor to strategize the adaptive measures. For PRRC, we reveal that while economic benefits have been widely reported, potential negative impacts of this model related to environmental and social aspects are lacking. Therefore, while the lucrative prawn trade might financially benefit the farmers', the economic benefit is marred by the underlying negative environmental impacts and social inequalities, limiting overall sustainability. This study also provides a case study to notify the spatial-temporal trends of PRRC in the last three decades and evaluate the associated geographical and social factors. Kien Giang province was selected as the study site since it is the largest PRRCacross the VMD. The lessons from Kien Giang can also be applied to other transformative agricultural models in both Mekong Delta and other deltas worldwide.

The river beds of the Mekong Delta are some of the most intensively sand mined places in the world. However, sand mining budgets remain limited to rough and indirect estimates. Here, we provide a first systematic, field-based estimation of the Mekong Delta’s sand mining budget. This budget overcomes the limitations of relying on officially declared statistics and bathymetric surveys of short channel reaches. We applied Sentinel-1 radar imagery to monitor the distribution of sand mining activities using boat metrics-driven mining intensity maps correlated with a field-based bathymetry difference map which were derived from two extensive bathymetric surveys conducted in 2014 and 2017. The two surveys cover ∼ 100 km in the Tiền River, reaching approximately 15% of the Mekong Delta. We then extrapolated the Tiền River findings to the broader Vietnamese Mekong Delta from 2015 to 2020 and measured a continuous increase of the extraction budget by ∼ 25% between 2015 (38 Mm3/yr) and 2020 (47 Mm3/yr). We estimated a total sand mining budget of 254 Mm3 during the 6-year study period with an average annual rate of ∼ 42 Mm3. Our field-based annual rates are higher than both official declarations provided and estimates from previous studies which implies that a substantial portion of the sand mining budget remains unaccounted for. Riverbed sand mining remains a key threat to the Mekong Delta as it contributes to a multitude of other environmental threats including dam construction effects on sedimentation, ongoing subsidence, sea level rise and recurring saltwater intrusion. This study offers a new approach that can be implemented elsewhere to allow for systematic monitoring and quantification of sand mining activities that are vital for assessing future projections on environmental impacts.

Anthropogenic lead (Pb) has been the overwhelming Pb source to the global ocean, primarily contributed from Pb gasoline and industrial emissions. However, since Pb gasoline has been phased out globally, questions about whether there was a decrease in seawater Pb concentration, or if there are other sources taking over remains unclear in Southeast Asia. Here, combining Pb concentrations in seawater from Singapore Strait in 2010–2017; trap sediment in 2018–2019; and the previously published coral reconstruction covering 1975–2010; we found that the seawater Pb concentration in Singapore Strait over past decades followed the regional gasoline emissions, and no additional major source had contributed the Pb in the seawater since ~2010. The present-day Pb in Singapore Straits' water mainly follows the monsoonal current reversals, with variable degrees of scavenging that peak in inter-monsoon season. Minor Pb sources still contribute to some local-scale variabilities, despite a decadal-scale decreasing trend of Pb in seawater.

The Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) is the second largest river of Southeast Asia and one of the rivers with the highest load of suspended sediment delivered to the sea in the world. The Ayeyarwady is the lifeline of Myanmar which concentrates the majority of the population and GDP of the country. It is the main way of transport, a source of fluvial aggregates for development projects, hydropower, and the basin plays a major role in food supply and irrigation. Despite the Ayeyarwady ranking amongst the world’s largest rivers and its vital importance to Myanmar, scarce research has been undertaken to understand its morphodynamics and sediment transport regime. Current load estimates still heavily rely on the only systematic study of sediment transport dating back to the 19th century. Here, we provide a novel estimate for the recent washload sediment transport based on a field calibrated remote sensing model of surface suspended sediments concentrations. We show that the Ayeyarwady has likely become the river with the second or third largest delivery of washload to the sea in the world since it has so far been much less affected by damming compared to the vast majority of other rivers.

Satellite-based post-tornado assessments have been widely used for the detection of tornado tracks, which heavily relies on the identification of vegetation changes through observations at visible and near-infrared channels. During the deadly 10–11 December 2021 tornado outbreak, a series of violent tornadoes first touched down over northeastern Arkansas, an area dominated by cropland with rare vegetation coverage in winter. Through the examination of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer multi-spectral observations, this study reveals significant scars on shortwave infrared channels over this region, but none are captured by visible and near-infrared channels. The dominant soil type is aquert (one of vertisols), whose high clay content well preserves the severe changes in soil structure during the tornado passage, when the topmost soil layer was removed and underlying soil with higher moisture content was exposed to the air. This study suggests a quick post-tornado assessment method over less vegetated area by using shortwave infrared channels.

Global measurements of reservoir water levels are crucial for understanding Earth’s hydrological dynamics, especially in the context of global industrialization and climate change. Although radar altimetry has been used to measure the water level of some reservoirs with high accuracy, it is not yet feasible unless the water body is sufficiently large or directly located at the satellite’s nadir. This study proposes a gauging method applicable to a wide range of reservoirs using Sentinel–1 Synthetic Aperture Radar data and a digital elevation model (DEM). The method is straightforward to implement and involves estimating the mean slope–corrected elevation of points along the reservoir shoreline. We test the model on six case studies and show that the estimated water levels are accurate to around 10% error on average of independently verified values. This study represents a substantial step toward the global gauging of lakes and reservoirs of all sizes and in any location where a DEM is available.

Hysteresis in floodplain lakes occurs between stage and lake area. Stage-area hysteresis controls the storage and exchange of water and sediments, and is a critical hydrological behavior for lake management. While hysteresis has been repeatedly observed in the floodplain lakes of large rivers, the hydrological mechanism and factors in control have been poorly understood thus far. In this paper, we investigate the role of geomorphology in controlling lake hysteresis, specifically the geologic setting and the lake basin, the lake position relative to the main stem of the river, as well as the influence of lake shape and its internal depositional landforms on inundation dynamics. We study the floodplain lakes along three of the largest rivers around the world: the Curuai Lake of the Amazon River, the Tonle Sap Lake of the Mekong River, and the Poyang Lake of the Yangtze River. The three lakes exhibit a similar counter-clockwise stage-area hysteresis: for a given stage, the lake area is larger in the falling season than in the rising season. Our results indicate that hysteresis is mainly controlled by geomorphology, where the lake shape and basin size lead to delays in the drainage and drop in lake area during the falling season, resulting in counter-clockwise hysteresis. Nevertheless, the lakes are of distinct climatic and geologic-geomorphic settings, representing the variety in the lake types of large rivers. Hence, while geomorphology is the overall driver, unique lake characteristics delay the fall in water extent and shape hysteresis on a case-by-case nature. At Curuai, the complex floodplain morphology (impeded floodplain) complicates and slows the routing of outflow. At Tonle Sap, the lake flows into the river solely through a narrow channel, where a backwater effect restricts drainage. At Poyang, the wide lake shape upstream leads to counter-clockwise hysteresis, while the narrow channel downstream exhibits clockwise hysteresis. Out of the three investigated floodplains, Tonle Sap has the largest degree of hysteresis (0.41), followed by Poyang (0.17) and Curuai (0.13). This trend in hysteresis extent is a result of the different composition of inflow and the lake–river hydrological connectivity, attributed to lake geomorphology. This study is the first to address geomorphology as the primary control over lake hysteresis, which improves understanding of the stage-area curve in empirical and numerical hydrological models, and potentially floodplain management.