AQUAM water monitoring system project on track – despite pandemic and closed borders

Since early March, Australian-based team members from The University of Queensland (UQ) have been back on the ground in Vietnam to progress delivery a Aus4Innovation-funded project that aims to improve decision making in mangrove aquaculture systems.

Project manager Sang Phan said that being back in Vietnam allows the team to better survey and work with project stakeholders to identify local needs and constraints to improve the project.

“While we were able to still build strong partnerships with local partners and carry out project activities smoothly by holding regular online meetings during COVID, being back on the ground makes communication with local farmers, field technicians, and field managers a lot more effective,” Mr Phan said.

“We have been busy testing the performance of the AQUAM stations and apps before we start to conduct training for local technical staff and farmers from late March 2022,” he said.

Mr Phan said the team is aiming to handover the system to Ca Mau Province in May 2022.

The team have also been collecting field data to analyse the relationships between water quality within ponds, mangrove aquaculture pond performance and river water quality to build better water information systems.

The UQ team has also been in discussion with local partners to propose a large-scale research and development project for characterising the different parts of the landscape that are most appropriate for different aquaculture systems and environmental monitoring for ecological wetland production systems such as mangrove aquaculture and rice fish. These systems are predicted to be among the most resilient production systems in the lowlands of the Mekong delta under climate change and with sea level rise. The team is in the process of preparing a pre-feasibility and scoping assessment for this proposal and then will search for potential national and international funders.