Two decades after the construction of the first major dam, the Mekong basin and its six riparian countries have seen rapid economic growth and development of the river system. Hydropower dams, aggregate mines, flood-control dykes, and groundwater-irrigated agriculture have all provided short-term economic benefits throughout the basin. However, it is becoming evident that anthropic changes are significantly affecting the natural functioning of the river and its floodplains. We now ask if these changes are risking major adverse impacts for the 70 million people living in the Mekong Basin. Many livelihoods in the basin depend on ecosystem services that will be strongly impacted by alterations of the sediment transport processes that drive river and delta morpho-dynamics, which underpin a sustainable future for the Mekong basin and Delta. Drawing upon ongoing and recently published research, we provide an overview of key drivers of change (hydropower development, sand mining, dyking and water infrastructures, climate change, and accelerated subsidence from pumping) for the Mekong's sediment budget, and their likely individual and cumulative impacts on the river system. Our results quantify the degree to which the Mekong delta, which receives the impacts from the entire connected river basin, is increasingly vulnerable in the face of declining sediment loads, rising seas and subsiding land. Without concerted action, it is likely that nearly half of the Delta's land surface will be below sea level by 2100, with the remaining areas impacted by salinization and frequent flooding. The threat to the Delta can be understood only in the context of processes in the entire river basin. The Mekong River case can serve to raise awareness of how the connected functions of river systems in general depend on undisturbed sediment transport, thereby informing planning for other large river basins currently embarking on rapid economic development.

The Lancang/Mekong River Basin is presently undergoing a period of rapid hydropower development. In its natural undeveloped state, the river transports about 160 million metric tons of sediment per year, maintaining the geomorphologic features of the basin, sustaining habitats, and transporting the nutrients that support ecosystem productivity. Despite the importance of sediment in the river, currently little attention is being paid to reservoir sediment trapping. This study is devoted to assessing the potential for managing sediment and its impact on energy production in the Se San, Sre Pok, and Se Kong tributaries of the Mekong River. These tributaries drain a set of adjacent watersheds that are important with respect to biodiversity and ecological productivity, and serve as a significant source of flow and sediment to the mainstream Mekong River. A daily sediment transport model is used to assess tradeoffs among energy production and sediment and flow regime alteration in multiple reservoir systems. This study finds that eventually about 40%–80% of the annual suspended sediment load may be trapped in reservoirs. Clearly, these reservoirs will affect the rivers' sediment regimes. However, even after 100 years of simulated sedimentation, reservoir storage capacities and hydropower production at most reservoir sites are not significantly reduced. This suggests that the strongest motivation for implementing measures to reduce trapped sediment is their impact not on hydropower production but on fish migration and survival and on sediment‐dependent ecosystems such as the Vietnam Delta and Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake.

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