Felix Dörr accom­pa­nies drilling and instal­la­tion of a land subsi­dence obser­va­tory in the Mekong Delta

As part of his doctoral project, Felix Dörr, young scien­tist at the Hector Fellow Academy, spent three weeks in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam conduct­ing research on land subsi­dence and ground­wa­ter salin­iza­tion in Novem­ber and Decem­ber 2022.

During his visit, the land subsi­dence obser­va­tory, which repre­sents a major aspect of Felix Dörr’s doctoral project, was drilled and installed. The knowl­edge gained from these studies forms a profound under­stand­ing of the dynamic processes of land subsi­dence and can be the basis of a sustain­able water resource manage­ment in the Mekong Delta and other delta areas around the globe. Young Scien­tist Felix Dörr is enthu­si­as­tic about his research trip in Vietnam: “It was super excit­ing and we were able to install a complex and so far unique monitor­ing system in the Mekong Delta to better under­stand the causes of land subsidence.”

The Mekong Delta, home for about 17 million people, is being confronted with increas­ingly existence-threat­en­ing environ­men­tal changes since several years, in partic­u­lar land subsi­dence and ground­wa­ter salin­iza­tion. One of the main reasons for this is consid­ered to be the high extrac­tion of ground­wa­ter. In his doctoral project, Felix Dörr tries to develop a better under­stand­ing of these processes by using innov­a­tive measure­ment technolo­gies and examines the effect of poten­tial counter­mea­sures. His doctoral thesis is super­vised by Hector Fellow Franz Nestmann.