Thursday April 16, 2026
University of Colorado Boulder —
After the Mekong River descends from the highlands in China, it flows into Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam providing freshwater for farming, fishing, hydropower and transportation. 52 million people rely on the lower Mekong River Basin for their livelihoods, according to the Mekong River Commission.
In the past decade, the Lower Mekong’s flows have dwindled, putting pressure on downstream communities. Until recently, a lack of information on the river’s hydrology has hindered efforts to understand these changes.
A new paper from an international group of researchers, including INSTAAR scientist Robert Brakenridge, takes aim at this knowledge gap. They present a suite of tools capable of precisely monitoring river flows.
The author’s techniques rely on satellite-mounted sensors that map “passive microwave radiation” across the Earth’s surface.