title: Sediment: curse or blessing for Tonle Sap Lake?
abstract: It has been claimed that Tonle Sap Lake is rapidly filling with sediment as a result of increasing sediment yields from the catchment. Infilling of the lake basin would have serious implications for the magnitude of flooding in central Cambodia and the Mekong Delta region and threaten the lake's unique ecosystem. In this article, we synthesize the results of radiocarbon dating of sediment cores and hydrodynamic modeling results to provide an empirically based assessment of this issue. We find that current sedimentation rates within the lake basin proper are low and have been for several millennia. However, sedimentation at the lake margin and in its floodplain is relatively high, which presents a range of issues for riparian communities.
authors.affiliation: Water Resources Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. matti.kummu@iki.fi
authors.forename: Matti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kummu
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Penny
authors.forename: Juha
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sarkkula
authors.forename: Jorma
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Koponen
mesh_terms: D002160:Cambodia; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D005618:Fresh Water; D019015:Geologic Sediments; D014744:Vietnam; D014872:Water Movements