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Hydrological impact of war‐induced deforestation in the Mekong Basin
Author(s) -
Lacombe Guillaume,
Pierret Alain
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
ecohydrology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.982
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1936-0592
pISSN - 1936-0584
DOI - 10.1002/eco.1395
Subject(s) - mekong river , deforestation (computer science) , structural basin , scale (ratio) , drainage basin , yield (engineering) , geography , hydrology (agriculture) , environmental science , geology , cartography , materials science , geotechnical engineering , computer science , metallurgy , programming language , paleontology
The Vietnam War played a decisive role in the pre‐1990s deforestation of the lower Mekong Basin, which in turn likely influenced regional broad‐scale hydrology. This note presents and discusses new analyses that strengthen this thesis. Although concurrent overestimation of discharge and underestimation of rainfall, a couple of years after bombing climaxed in the early 1970s, could theoretically explain the sharp rise in water yield previously attributed to bomb‐induced deforestation, new observations suggest that bombing has durably modified the landscape: by 2002, degraded forests still largely overlapped with areas heavily bombed 30 years earlier. This corroborates observed long‐term hydrological changes and suggests that warfare‐induced deforestation has more profound and durable hydrological effects than previously thought. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.