ViWaT engineering

Sustainable technologies in coastal protection and water management

Landscape of the Mekong Delta characterized by arms of rivers.

In the joint project ViWaT, German and Vietnamese partners work on sustainable solution concepts to conserve land and water resources in the Mekong Delta.

The Mekong Delta in Vietnam is a region of about 40,577 km2 (around the size of Baden-Württemberg), characterised by its many river arms. The predominantly flat landscape is used intensively for rice, fruit, fish and shellfish cultivation. The fertile soil allows up to three harvests a year.

However, this economically and culturally important region of Vietnam is greatly affected by climate change and anthropogenic impact. Over time, the intensive use of groundwater has led to considerable land subsidence, amounting to several centimetres per year in some cases. At the same time, the sea level is rising by several millimetres per year and is causing surface and groundwater salinisation. Dams installed upstream minimise sediment entry in the Mekong Delta. Together with heavy coastal erosion, this leads to substantial land loss in the Mekong region.

Aim of the ViWaT joint project was to establish sustainable solution concepts for the issues in the Mekong Delta and the conservation of land and water resources. The ViWaT project was divided into three pillars, which each address different focal topics: ViWaT Engineering, ViWaT Planning and ViWaT Operations.

Under ViWaT Engineering, TZW, together with 11 German partners from research and industry, focused on water management in the Mekong region.

To assess water quality, 380 samples of groundwater, surface water, drinking water, and water from farms and rain tanks were analyzed at TZW in several sampling campaigns in the project region. The results showed high levels of coliform bacteria, not only in surface water and farm water where these bacteria were expected, but also in groundwater and water tank samples. MALDI-TOF-MS analysis also identified pathogenic Vibrio bacteria in some samples. Tests for antibiotic resistance showed positive findings for resistance to antibiotics used in Vietnam - especially in fish farming.

In summary, the studies provide a detailed picture of the microbial water quality occurring in the Mekong River. The heavy contamination of the surface water requires a correspondingly efficient treatment and microbial risk management (QMRA) if it is to be used as an alternative to groundwater.

Publications

Elsäßer D., Ho J., Niessner R., Tiehm A., Seidel M.: Heterogeneous asymmetric recombinase polymerase amplification (haRPA) for rapid hygiene control of large-volume water samples. Analytical Biochemistry 546: 58-64 (2018) DOI 10.1016/j.ab.2018.01.032

Ho J., Seidel M., Niessner R., Eggert J., Tiehm A.: Long amplicon (LA)-qPCR for the discrimination of infectious and noninfectious phiX174 bacteriophages after UV inactivation. Water Research 103: 141-148 (2016) DOI 10.1016/j.watres.2016.07.032

Stange C., Sidhu J.P.S.,Tiehm A.,Toze S.: Antibiotic resistance and virulence genes in coliform water isolates. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health 219: 823-831 (2016) DOI 10.1016/j.ijheh.2016.07.015

 

 

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