报告题目：From the Mekong Delta to the World: Sand Mining, River Instability, and Pathways to Sustainable Management

报告人：Assoc Prof Edward Park

时  间：2026年6月18日上午10:00-11:30

地  点：地理资源所A0901会议室 

报告人简介：

Assoc. Prof. Edward Park (PhD 2017, UT Austin) is a leading expert on anthropogenic forcing in tropical delta systems (2024 FWCI 3.1). His work established the first mechanistic sediment budgets for sand mining in the Mekong Delta, linking extraction-driven incision to salinity intrusion and reframing sand mining as a first-order geomorphic driver in delta evolution. His scientific leadership has advanced from quantifying external forcing to defining system-level stability thresholds in tropical deltas. Assoc. Prof. Park has established his scientific foundation in the Mekong and built the team capacity and regional networks to execute it at scale. He currently leads an active research group of five PhD students and three research staffs, all working on delta science and fluvial geomorphology in Southeast Asia. He has led several competitive grants on delta sustainability and river impacts (amounts over 3M USD in the past 3 years), including two MOE AcRF Tier 2s and one Tier 3. His standing in the field is further reflected in editorial roles in leading journals including the Journal of Hydrology and recognition through the Nanyang Research Award (Young Investigator, 2023), CAS PIFI Distinguished Scientist (2025), and International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG) Early Career Medal (2026). His research has often been cited in policies, including the most recent Mekong River Commission Report (MRC, 2025), informing regional river governance. 

报告摘要：

Sand and gravel mining has become one of the most pervasive yet under-recognized human pressures on river systems in the Anthropocene. Although the problem is global, its drivers, extraction sites, and environmental consequences are often spatially decoupled, making the full extent of mining difficult to detect and its impacts difficult to govern. This talk uses the Mekong Delta as a primary testbed to show how an intensive regional case study can illuminate the broader global challenge of river sand mining. Drawing on recent work from the Mekong and a new global synthesis of river sand and gravel mining, we argue that sustainable management requires linking four elements that are too often studied separately: the socioeconomic drivers of demand, the spatial and temporal extent of extraction, the hydrogeomorphic and socio-ecological impacts, and the governance responses needed to address them. The Mekong Delta offers a particularly powerful example because it reveals how under-reported and illegal extraction can alter sediment budgets, riverbed morphology, bank stability, salinity intrusion, and delta resilience. We then place these findings in a wider global context, highlighting emerging hotspots, fragmented evidence, and the need for basin-scale monitoring, improved transparency, and sediment-budget-based management. Rather than treating the Mekong as an isolated case, this talk presents it as a window into a planetary-scale problem and as a foundation for developing more transferable principles for sustainable river management.

陆地水循环及地表过程重点实验室