Researchers backed by multimillion-dollar grants from NASA are heading to Southeast Asia’s Mekong River region to find ways to improve dams so that they are less harmful to people and the environment.
Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) are to spend three years analyzing sites in the lower Mekong River basin in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The project is to be funded by two grants from the US space agency, NASA, totaling US$3 million, and the researchers hope that their findings will improve dams around the world.
Photo: AFP
“The most egregious effects of dam building are displacement and relocation,” MSU professor of fisheries and wildlife Daniel Kramer said. “But the research that we’re doing is also suggesting that there are a lot of less obvious things that the effects of dams bring on local people and ecosystems.”
For example, there are concerns about damage to farming and fisheries due to dam projects along the lower Mekong, which is the world’s largest freshwater fishery and home to 60 million people.
The environmental impact of dams might drastically change the economies and social structures of communities, Kramer added.
Dam building is experiencing a resurgence worldwide — with many projects backed by Chinese funding — as more countries look for affordable ways to generate energy for their growing populations.
Most Mekong countries, especially China, have been planning and building hydropower dams since the late 1980s, but an uptick in dam projects began about 15 years ago.
The Mekong River’s mainstream now has about 11 dams and more than 100 on its tributaries, MSU professor of geography Jiaguo Qi (齊家國) said.
The MSU researchers are to analyze how dams affect the flow of rivers, local agriculture, fisheries, irrigations systems and wetland ecosystems, Qi said.
As well as analyzing satellite imagery, researchers are to develop models to simulate historical water flows and project how those flows might change as a result of dam construction and shrinking glaciers in the Himalayan headwaters.
Interviews are also to be conducted with local residents to find out how communities that surround or are downstream from dams cope with the loss of wetlands and fisheries, and what the economic benefits are.
The research team is to regularly produce papers and hold workshops throughout the three-year period, with the final report available to the general public.
It is hoped that the research would be used to make existing dams and those still in the planning stage more sustainable, Qi said, adding that while some preliminary research has already begun, the field work for the project is to begin in May.
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