Question: What is the mekong river like?

Daniel Parsons answered on 11 Nov 2014:

Hello there,
It is amazing. It is a big river even in the dry season, but during the monsoon the river swells to around 5 times its size and can rise up about 20 meters in water levels! The river banks are huge, about 30 meters high – the are so big they look like cliffs at the seaside here in the UK!

What is perhaps most incredible is the Tonle Sap River – because the Mekong floods so much this smaller river flows backwards in the wet season fills up a lake that is bigger than Wales. In the dry season when the Mekong levels drop the Tonle Sap returns to flowing back out towards the sea and the lake shrinks back down again!

This flow reversal is really important for spawning of fish in the basin and over 2 million people rely on the fish as their main food source. We are worried that if climate change continues the monsoon rains will be less strong across the Mekong and as a result less fish will be produced, causing food shortages in the future for the people who live there.