U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Fact Sheet 2011–3076

June 2011

Forecast Mekong

Sambor

Lat Sua

Pak Lay Pak Chom

Xanakham

Pak Beng

Ban Khoum

Xayabouri

Don Sahong

Stung Treng

China

Thailand

India

Laos

Vietnam

Myanmar 

(Burma)

Cambodia

Bangladesh

0 200 400

Kilometers

Proposed dams

Dams under construction

Existing dams

N

Visualizing 

how dams 

will affect 

natural 

resources 

is key to 

management 

of those 

resources. 

Forecast Mekong is part of the U.S. Department of 

State’s Lower Mekong Initiative, which was launched in 

2009 by Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Foreign Ministers 

of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to enhance 

partnerships between the U.S. and the Lower Mekong River 

countries in the areas of environment, health, education, 

and infrastructure. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is 

working in close cooperation with the U.S. Department of 

State to use research and data from the Lower Mekong Basin 

to provide hands-on results that will help decision makers in 

Lower Mekong River countries in the planning and design for 

restoration, conservation, and management efforts in the basin.

Forecast Mekong provides a forum for regional partners, 

scientists, and engineers in the Lower Mekong Basin to share 

data and support local research efforts and elevate knowledge 

about the vital importance of the Mekong River and Delta 

in maintaining food security and livelihoods in the region. 

Ultimately, Forecast Mekong will lead to more informed 

decisions about how to make the Lower Mekong Basin resilient 

and sustainable in the face of climate change, population 

growth, economic stresses, and other impacts.

Initial efforts of Forecast Mekong in 2009 highlighted the 

increasing cooperation between the U.S. and Lower Mekong 

River countries in the areas of environment and food security. 

An offshoot of the Delta Research and Global Observation 

Network (DRAGON) Partnership, Forecast Mekong was 

conceived as a platform for data integration, modeling, and 

visualization systems to help policy makers and the public 

understand and predict outcomes of water-management projects 

and climate variability in the Lower Mekong Basin. The USGS, 

in partnership with the Lower Mekong River governments 

and universities, is working to provide valuable planning tools 

to visualize and predict the consequences of climate change, 

water-resources development, and river management. 

In 2011 Forecast Mekong is undertaking a variety of 

activities to help inform managers, to help build science 

capacity of institutions in the Lower Mekong Basin, and to 

support local research efforts. 

Data Visualization

The USGS is building a graphic visualization tool 

(GVT) that will assist the Lower Mekong River countries in 

understanding the benefits and consequences of water-resources 

development projects such as a hydropower dams. The GVT 

will focus on an existing hydropower dam on a tributary of 

the Mekong River and will demonstrate the utility of using 

visualization tools at proposed dam sites on the main stem of 

the Mekong River to better understand the potential effects of 

hydropower and irrigation dams on the hydrology and ecology 

of the Mekong River and Delta. The GVT is designed to clearly 

illustrate the results of Mekong River Commission (MRC) 

hydrologic model predictions of river flow, water quality, and 

salinity conditions for different regional development scenarios 

including proposed dams. Along with the MRC, the USGS 

is sharing information with other organizations working on 

related issues, such as the Natural Heritage Institute and the 

International Crane Foundation. 

This project includes the following tasks:

• construct a computer animation for a tributary of the 

Mekong River that is based on a digital elevation model and 

associated hydrologic, political, and ecological boundaries 

and layers from USGS datasets.

• produce a temporal simulation of effects of altered 

hydrology and associated effects of disrupted fish 

migration, change in fisheries biodiversity and productivity, 

rice cultivation area, and crop production after dams 

are constructed.

• provide all the visualization and hydrologic models with 

annotation to show proof of concept and to stimulate data 

and idea exchange and the production of peer-reviewed, 

scientifically defensible products.
Scientific Capacity Building

The USGS is engaging regional partners in the Lower 

Mekong Basin to support the development of local scientific 

capacity and research efforts by providing the following:

• technical support for a study of Persistent Organic 

Pollutants (POPs) led by scientists from the International 

Crane Foundation, the University of Science in Ho Chi 

Minh City, Can Tho University, and others in the Mekong 

Wetlands University Network. As part of a workshop in 

December 2010 at the Vietnam University of Science, 

USGS assisted with the development of field sampling 

protocols, provided training in wetland mapping and 

sediment sampling techniques, and provided Landsat 

imagery to help identify sampling locations. 

• a USGS senior-level groundwater hydrogeologist for a 

90-day assignment to the MRC office in Phnom Penh, 

Cambodia, beginning in April 2011. The hydrogeologist 

will advise the MRC on a variety of groundwater issues 

such as transboundary groundwater movement and usage 

in the Lower Mekong Basin and the development of a 

groundwater management plan.

• two USGS geospatial scientists to the DRAGON Institute 

at Can Tho University in Vietnam for a 45-day assignment 

in the summer and fall of 2011. These scientists will be 

focused on providing training and technical assistance to 

university students and researchers on spatial database 

development, Web-based mapping applications, and data 

integration. 

• a hydrologist to teach a course in Thailand on sediment 

transport for the MRC in the spring of 2011.

• remote sensing experts to teach a radar-based mapping 

workshop requested by Can Tho University.

• assistance with the development and funding of small 

projects at Can Tho University related to fisheries research, 

community-based water-quality monitoring, and remote 

sensing.

Other recent related activities included providing 

geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing 

training in 2010 at the annual Mekong Wetlands University 

Network training course, organizing and sponsoring a special 

session on the Mekong River at the Deltas in Times of Climate 

Change conference in the Netherlands, and facilitating the 

signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. 

Department of the Interior and the Vietnam Ministry of Natural 

Resources and Environment.

Knowledge Transfer

The United States has a long history of water-resources 

development and the effects of multipurpose dams on large 

river systems such as the Mississippi are well documented. The 

dams in the Mississippi River Basin provide benefits including 

hydropower, navigation, flood control, and irrigation, but they 

also have consequences including alteration of the ecosystem 

and the hydrologic process and threatening and endangering 

aquatic and terrestrial species. The USGS will research and 

then synthesize historical and current documents and datasets 

for the purpose of describing and quantifying changes in flow, 

water quality, ecology, geomorphology and sediment in the 

Mississippi River Basin, including the Mississippi River Delta. 

The synthesis document will be published as a USGS report, 

thereby providing wide distribution of the document and its 

findings. The report will serve as a primer in water-resources 

development for a large river basin and provide lessons learned 

from decades of river management. This information can be 

used to compare restoration, conservation, and management 

efforts in the Mississippi River Basin with proposed waterresources development including hydropower dams in other 

major river systems such as the Mekong.

Data Sharing

The new Forecast Mekong Web site (http://deltas.usgs.gov/

fm/) provides a publicly available Web interface to serve data, 

reports, and scientific visualization products.

• The Web site includes an interactive Web mapping 

application to view and download regional downscaled 

climate data for the Lower Mekong Basin to aid in climate 

change research in Southeast Asia. 

• Monthly cloud-filtered and monthly-averaged Moderate 

Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite 

images are also included in the Web mapping application to 

provide a bird’s eye view of the Lower Mekong Basin. 

• The MODIS images were used to develop baselines of 

conditions for the widely used Normalized Difference 

Vegetation Index (NDVI). Departures from baseline 

conditions were calculated each month from 2002 to 2010 

and can be used to monitor changes in growth patterns of 

plants and flooding or drought extent. USGS scientists are 

automating the image acquisition and processing so that 

new monthly NDVI data will be continually available on 

the Forecast Mekong Web site.

By D. Phil Turnipseed

For more information, contact

Director

U.S. Geological Survey

National Wetlands Research Center

700 Cajundome Blvd.

Lafayette, LA 70506

337-266-8500

nwrcdirector@usgs.gov