Managing Health of Large Rivers in Developing Regions—A Case Study from the Mekong

摘要

A healthy river is considered to contain a diversity of habitats, intact linkages between ecosystem components and functional ecological processes. The river health strategy being developed for the Mekong recognizes the need to manage the physical habitat, the flows, the harvest, the water quality and the catchment condition in order to manage river health. A biological assessment programme has been developed as one tool to assess river health. Diatoms, zooplankton and benthic invertebrates are being evaluated at a series of sites throughout the basin. Preliminary analysis of the data indicates that most sites are in good or excellent condition, but there is some impairment of river health at some localities near large cities such as Phnom Penh and in the delta.