Latest News

DRAGON Institute-Mekong to be Established at Can Tho University, Vietnam

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and President George W. Bush welcomed the commencement of the Delta Research and Global Observation Network (DRAGON) project in Vietnam, which will establish an institute at Can Tho University to cooperate on training and research to produce healthy ecosystems and sustainable deltas.  More...

Hurricane Gustav

Hurricane Gustav hit the coast of Louisiana on Sept. 1, damaging wetlands and several barrier islands off the coast of the Mississippi River's Deltaic Plain. To learn more, go to http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/hurricane. Aerial photography will be continuously added to the site.

USGS Biologists Conduct Aerial Surveys of Mississippi River Oil Spill

At the request of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), USGS Pilot/Biologist Tommy Michot and Biologist Wylie Barrow conducted aerial surveys of the area impacted by the June 23, 2008 oil spill on the Mississippi River.  More...

Deltas in crisis: the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar (Burma)

Tropical Cyclone Nargis formed into a tropical cyclone on 27 April 2008, in the central Bay of Bengal about 360 miles off the southeast coast of India. The United Nations has estimated that up to 2 million people have been affected by the storm.  More...

DRAGON II (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) and III (Bangkok, Thailand) in April and May, 2008

DRAGON II was held in conjunction with International Symposium, GLOW V, Great Lakes of the World and Rift Valley Lakes: Sustainability, Integrity and Management conference, April 26-30, 2008 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A DRAGON III workshop was held in conjunction with the Southeast Asia University Network and an international wetland training course in Bangkok, Thailand, in May 2008.  More...

DRAGON IV to be held in Brazil in July 2008

A symposium entitled “USGS Delta Research and Global Observation Network: Large River Floodplains and Deltas in South America” has been organized by Dr. Beth Middleton, USGS National Wetlands Research Center. The DRAGON IV symposium was held in conjunction with the 8th Intecol Wetlands Conference in Cuiaba, Brazil, July 20-25, 2008. The purpose of the symposium was to continue to develop a world community of practice focused on delta and large river science.

Oil Spill Threatens Mississippi River Delta

On July 23, 2008, a massive oil spill occurred in the Mississippi River when a 600-foot tanker collided with a barge carrying No. 6 fuel oil near New Orleans, Louisiana. The spill affected a 100-mile area from New Orleans to the mouth of the river in the Gulf of Mexico.  More...

DRAGON bibliography

The delta research bibliography on the DRAGON Web site includes over 1,400 citations related to research on deltaic systems. Records link to abstracts and/or full-text or real- or near-time data. Some full-text is free while other items are restricted to subscribers or pay-per-view access. Users may search by title, author, or other fields. The asterisk (*) may be used for truncation. Clicking on the arrow labeled "all indexed fields" on the Advanced Search page will provide more options. The bibliographic database is updated monthly. If you have a paper or dataset to add to the network, please click the Data Upload tab on the DRAGON Web site for instructions.

DRAGON community contributions

Dr. Michiel van der Meulen has a recent publication in the Journal of Soils and Sediments that focuses on stakeholder relationships and aggregate extraction plans in the Dutch Rhine and Meuse Rivers.

van der Meulen, Michiel J., Rijnveld, Marc, Gerrits, Lasse M., Joziasse, Jan, van Heijst, Max W.I.M., and Gruijters, Stephan H.L.L., 2006, Handling Sediments in Dutch River Management: The Planning Stage of the Maaswerken River Widening Project : Journal of Soils and Sediments, vol. 6, no. 3, p. 163-172.

If you have a paper or dataset to add to the DRAGON network, please click the Data Upload tab on the DRAGON Web site for instructions.

What’s available on the USGS DRAGON Web site?

DRAGON includes information on 14 deltas of international importance: the Amazon, Danube, Ganges, Huang He, Irrawaddy, Lena, Mekong, Mississippi, Nile, Okavango, Rhine, Selenga, Volga, and Yangtze. More...