Study on the impact of the Chinese dammings for the lower Mekong River

这项奖励支持项目规划访问越南和老挝的旅费和维护费。参与者包括美国资深科学家莫妮克·莱克勒克博士；一名初级科学家，她的博士后伙伴，一名西班牙裔女性；以及另外四名美国资深科学家，他们代表着一系列互补的专业知识，以及美国各地广泛的机构和地理分布。这六名美国科学家将首先前往泰国清迈，然后前往老挝万象。在这两个地点，他们将与当地合作伙伴举行广泛会议，计划稍后提交的大型提案。这次访问的目的是计划一个全面的研究项目，如果获得资金，该项目将侧重于整个湄公河环境，不仅包括河流的水文和生物学，而且还包括上游新大坝对农业、小气候、林业、湄公河流域陆地哺乳动物和人类种群的影响。这种分析湄公河筑坝影响的广泛方法使该项目有别于其他许多以湄公河为基础的项目，它有可能引入许多不同的合作伙伴，包括美国和当地政府机构、世界自然基金会等非政府组织和自然保护协会，以支持规划和环境保护，并让年轻研究人员参与一项全面的研究。

This award supports the travel and maintenance costs for a project-planning visit to Vietnam and Laos. The participants are the PI, Dr. Monique Leclerc, a senior US scientist; one junior scientist, her post-doctoral associate, an Hispanic female; and four additional senior US scientists representing a complementary array of expertise as well as a broad institutional and geographical distribution across the US. This group of six US scientists will travel first to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and then on to Vientiane, Laos. In both locations, they would meet extensively with local partners to plan a large proposal to be submitted at a later date. The objective of this visit is to plan a comprehensive research project that, if funded, will focus on the entire Mekong River environment, including not just the hydrology and biology of the river, but also the effects of new dams upstream on agriculture, on microclimates, on forestry, on land mammals in the Mekong drainage, and on human populations. This broad-based approach to analyzing the effects of damming of the Mekong sets this project apart from so many other Mekong-based projects, and it has the potential to bring in many different partners including US and local government agencies, non-governmental organizations such as WWF and The Nature Conservancy to support planning and environmental protection as well as involvement of young researchers in a comprehensive study.