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

该奖项支持前往越南和老挝进行项目规划访问的差旅和维护费用。参与者是PI，Monique Leclerc博士，美国高级科学家;一名初级科学家，她的博士后助理，一名西班牙裔女性;以及另外四名美国高级科学家，代表了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的清迈，然后前往老挝的万象。 在这两个地点，他们将与当地合作伙伴广泛会晤，以规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，如果得到资助，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，还包括上游新水坝对农业、小气候、林业、湄公河流域陆地哺乳动物和人口的影响。 这种广泛的方法来分析湄公河筑坝的影响，使该项目有别于许多其他基于湄公河的项目，它有可能带来许多不同的合作伙伴，包括美国和当地政府机构，非政府组织，如世界自然基金会和大自然保护协会，以支持规划和环境保护，以及年轻研究人员参与综合研究。

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.