Latest News

DRAGON Asia Summit 2009 to be held in Siem Reap, Cambodia, June 22-25, 2009

The purpose of the DRAGON Asia Summit is to forge new global partnerships to develop the science needed to inform decision making in the Mekong, Mississippi, and other large river and delta systems around the globe. The summit will feature sessions and special symposia related to specific deltas, such as the Yangtze, Chao Phraya, Huang He, Volga, and others. New tools and visualization approaches will explore integrating ecological, agricultural, and hydrological sciences with social systems, education, poverty alleviation, and other societal dimensions.

   Click here for more information on the DRAGON Asia Summit.

Upstream Dams 'Threaten Mekong'

Vietnamese environmental experts have sharply criticized plans by Laos, China, and Thailand to build a cascade of dams along the upper reaches of the Mekong River, which flows through six countries, including Vietnam.  More...

Vietnam starts $112 million climate change program

Vietnam’s environment agency formally launched its VND 1.96 trillion (US $112.44 million) program to protect the country from the effects of climate change on Monday 12 January 2009. Scientists from the US and Vietnam will study the impact of climate change on the Mekong Delta and other low-lying river regions around the world. Gregory Smith, head of the National Wetlands Research Center of the US Interior Department, said the aim of the joint study is to gather large-scale data sets to help model the impact of rising sea levels and worsening cyclonic storms on river deltas, man-made structures and communities.  More...

DRAGON Institute-Mekong to be established at Can Tho University, Vietnam

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and President George W. Bush welcomed the commencement of the Delta Research and Global Observation Network (DRAGON) project in Vietnam, which will establish an institute at Can Tho University to cooperate on training and research to produce healthy ecosystems and sustainable deltas.  More...

Hurricane Gustav

Hurricane Gustav hit the coast of Louisiana on Sept. 1, damaging wetlands and several barrier islands off the coast of the Mississippi River's Deltaic Plain. To learn more, go to http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/hurricane. Aerial photography will be continuously added to the site.

USGS biologists conduct aerial surveys of Mississippi River oil spill

At the request of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), USGS Pilot/Biologist Tommy Michot and Biologist Wylie Barrow conducted aerial surveys of the area impacted by the June 23, 2008 oil spill on the Mississippi River.  More...

Deltas in crisis: the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar (Burma)

Tropical Cyclone Nargis formed into a tropical cyclone on 27 April 2008, in the central Bay of Bengal about 360 miles off the southeast coast of India. The United Nations has estimated that up to 2 million people have been affected by the storm.  More...

DRAGON bibliography

The delta research bibliography on the DRAGON Web site includes over 1,400 citations related to research on deltaic systems. Records link to abstracts and/or full-text or real- or near-time data. Some full-text is free while other items are restricted to subscribers or pay-per-view access. Users may search by title, author, or other fields. The asterisk (*) may be used for truncation. Clicking on the arrow labeled "all indexed fields" on the Advanced Search page will provide more options. The bibliographic database is updated monthly. If you have a paper or dataset to add to the network, please click the Data Upload tab on the DRAGON Web site for instructions.

What’s available on the USGS DRAGON Web site?

DRAGON includes information on 14 deltas of international importance: the Amazon, Danube, Ganges, Huang He, Irrawaddy, Lena, Mekong, Mississippi, Nile, Okavango, Rhine, Selenga, Volga, and Yangtze. More...