Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta covers more than 40,500 square kilometers of southwestern Vietnam where the Mekong River fans out into the sea, supporting roughly 19 million people across its provinces and the city of Can Tho. Surveys between 1997 and 2007 documented over 1,000 animal species in the delta, including the Laotian rock rat, a rodent belonging to a family previously known only from an 11 million year old fossil record. The delta's wet, low lying geography, averaging under a meter above sea level across three quarters of its area, has made it one of Vietnam's most productive agricultural and aquaculture regions and, at the same time, one of the areas most vulnerable to rising seas.