No abstract

The impact of the University of Illinois at Chicago-based Vietnam-Laos International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) Program "Studies on Biodiversity of Vietnam and Laos", which has been in operation for the period of 1998-2005, touches on five major areas of endeavor: (a) biodiversity inventory and conservation; (b) studies on medicinal plants; (c) drug discovery and development; (d) economic development; and (e) issues on intellectual property rights and benefit sharing in natural products drug discovery and development. Highlights are presented and the significance is discussed.

Mangrove forest plays a very important role for both ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. In Vietnam, mangrove is mainly distributed in the Mekong delta. Recently, mangrove areas in this region decreased rapidly in both quality and quantity. The forest became bare, divided and scattered into many small patches, which was a major driver of ecosystem degradation. Without a quantitative method for effectively assessing mangrove health in the regional scale, the sustainably conserving mangrove is the challenge for the local governments. Remote sensing data has been widely used for monitoring mangrove distributions, while the characterization of spatial metrics is important to understand the underlying processes of mangrove change. The objectives of this study were to develop an approach to monitor mangrove health in Mui Ca Mau, Ca Mau province of Vietnam by utilizing satellite image textures to assess the mangrove patterns. The research result showed that mangrove areas increased double by 2015, but the forest had become more fragmented. We can be seen those changes in land use mainly come from land conversion from forest to shrimp farms, settlements areas and public constructions. The conserving existing mangrove forest in Mui Ca Mau should consider the relations between mangrove health and influencing factors indicated in the manuscript.

The Mekong River mouth has a significance of biodiversity and biological resources, especially for the floating and benthic communities in the ecosystem. The study area belongs to 4 provinces in the lower Mekong River: Tien Giang, Tra Vinh, Ben Tre, and Soc Trang. The results of Shannon-Wiener biodiversity value assessment and Berger - Parke index of 3 major aquatic communities in the area including phytoplankton, zooplankton and benthic showing that biodiversity at low levels in terms of species composition as well as biodiversity values. More noteworthy is that the benthic animal communities are at the highest level of risk of loss and biodiversity value loss, mainly due to socio-economic activities, dams construction activities, the industrial and agricultural activities that have made the environment here, especially the sediment environment, strongly affected. The study has proposed a number of solutions to minimize the rapid decline of biodiversity of the region by specific measures from many directions: management, education, propaganda, conservation, prevention of the factors affecting the quality of ecosystem in the region.