Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta (Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long or simply Đồng Bằng Sông Mê Kông), also known as the Western Region (Miền Tây) or South-western region (Tây Nam Bộ), is the region in southwestern Vietnam where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of distributaries. The Mekong delta region encompasses a large portion of south-western Vietnam of over . The size of the area covered by water depends on the season. Its wet coastal geography makes it an important source of agriculture and aquaculture for the country. The delta has been occupied as early as the 4th century BC. As a product of Khmer, Vietnamese, Chinese, and French settlement in the region, the delta and its waterways have numerous names, including the Khmer term Bassac to refer to the lower basin and the largest river branch flowing through it. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, Vietnam was split into two with South Vietnam inheriting the southern half of Vietnam becoming the State of Vietnam and eventually the Republic of Vietnam, also known as South Vietnam, with their own administrative states (see ). After 1975, the Mekong Delta ceased being a part of the Republic of Vietnam, succeeded by the current Vietnamese nation. Today, the region comprises 12 provinces: Long An, Đồng Tháp, Tiền Giang, An Giang, Bến Tre, Vĩnh Long, Trà Vinh, Hậu Giang, Kiên Giang, Sóc Trăng, Bạc Liêu, and Cà Mau, along with the province-level municipality of Cần Thơ. The Mekong Delta has been dubbed a 'biological treasure trove'. Over 1,000 animal species were recorded between 1997 and 2007 and new species of plants, fish, lizards, and mammals have been discovered in previously unexplored areas, including the Laotian rock rat, thought to be extinct. The low-lying coastal geography of the region makes it vulnerable to climate change caused sea level rise, alongside related issues such as coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion. The Mekong Delta was likely inhabited long since prehistory with the civilizations of Funan and Chenla maintaining a presence in the Mekong Delta for centuries.

Grevelingen. Reconstruire l’estuaireUne étude sur les risques et les potentialités de la réouverture du delta Rhin-Meuse.

Loan André Louis Laurent

Les deltas comptent parmi les milieux les plus vulnérables aux changements alors même qu’ils sont toujours en devenir. Ils sont des environnements matériels en perpétuel flux où tout est destiné à se dégrader ; des lieux de transformations agitées et d’interactions silencieuses où l’eau et la terre se donnent réciproquement forme. Le Plan Delta, l’une des plus grandes réalisations des Pays-Bas au cours des siècles passés, a fait du delta Rhin-Meuse l'un des territoires les plus denses et les plus sûrs du monde. Pourtant, un de ses bras de mer, le Grevelingen, a été fermé par d’énormes barrages. Ceux-ci le transforment en une étendue d’eau salée morte et statique, rompent les continuités écologiques deltaïques en fragmentant les eaux par des lignes de séparations solidifiées et en cristallisant le régime de la technonature néerlandaise. Un retour des marées dans le Grevelingen s’impose donc. Les contraintes modernes assignées aux processus fluviaux et côtiers se heurtent désormais à des amplitudes croissantes, appelant une approche plus complexe et résiliente, où contrôle et flexibilité forment un équilibre dynamique. Ce passage paradigmatique d'un système binaire à une stratégie de protection progressive et d'inondabilité nécessite de repenser la réciprocité entre le cadre de vie et les processus naturels, en concevant des frontières mouvantes pour des territoires fluctuants. Il s’agit de porter une attention particulière aux intermédiaires et aux franchissements pour progressivement rompre la dichotomie entre techno-infrastructures et écosystèmes infrastructurels, restaurer une socioécologie estuarienne pour le Grevelingen et redéfinir la relation perdue entre la ville et le delta.

2023

Dataset for: Climate change scenarios at hourly time-step over Switzerland from an enhanced temporal downscaling approach

Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Adrien Michel

In fall 2019, a new set of climate change scenarios has been released for Switzerland, the CH2018 dataset (www.climate-scenarios.ch). The data areprovided at daily resolution. We produced from the CH2018 dataset a new set of climate change scenarios tempor ...

2021

Grevelingen. Reconstruire l’estuaireUne étude sur les risques et les potentialités de la réouverture du delta Rhin-Meuse.

Atlas Narratives of Anthropogenic Transformations across the Vietnamese Mekong Delta's Urban-Rural Territories: Water Ecosystems as Subject for the Social Ecological Transition

Dataset for: Climate change scenarios at hourly time-step over Switzerland from an enhanced temporal downscaling approach

Atlas Narratives of Anthropogenic Transformations across the Vietnamese Mekong Delta's Urban-Rural Territories: Water Ecosystems as Subject for the Social Ecological Transition

Grevelingen. Reconstruire l’estuaireUne étude sur les risques et les potentialités de la réouverture du delta Rhin-Meuse.

Dataset for: Climate change scenarios at hourly time-step over Switzerland from an enhanced temporal downscaling approach