The Mekong Delta, which spills out across the southern tip of Vietnam after the river has traversed Cambodia and Laos, is a prime example.<\/p>\n
There, a crane-equipped barge can extract 300 cubic meters (equivalent to 79,250 US gallons) of sand in just three hours.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-1245953970-1013x675.jpg\")
A dredging boat pumps sand on the Mekong River in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Tang Chhin Sothy\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
In Vietnam, current extraction rates are about 11.8 times above the rate of natural sediment replacement, which is about 6.18 megatons per year. <\/p>\n
“Between 2015 and 2022, approximately 366 million cubic meters of sand was extracted there, causing a massive sediment deficit that resulted in a total mean riverbed incision of 0.48 meters (or 0.053 meters per year),” hydrologist and study author Dung Duc Tran of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore told ScienceAlert.<\/p>\n
The riverbed lost almost half a meter of depth across that period.<\/p>\n
It may not seem like a big difference on the water’s surface, but that amount of change can have major repercussions for the way water flows<\/a>, the health of that river system, and the structure of the banks on either side.<\/p>\n In Vietnam’s section of the Mekong, more than 1,800 houses collapsed between 2018 and 2020 as a result of riverbank erosion.<\/p>\n By 2023, the Vietnamese Mekong was riddled with 585 major erosion hotspots, along 741 kilometers (460 miles) of river.<\/p>\n These changes to the riverbed also amplify what is known as the “backwater effect”, in which salty water<\/a> creeps further and further upstream.<\/p>\n If the current rate of sand mining in the Vietnamese Mekong continues, experts say<\/a> there will be no more sand left by 2035.<\/p>\n But the Mekong is just one of many riparian victims of the international construction boom, which needs sand to make concrete and other building materials.<\/p>\n China’s Poyang Lake has undergone such drastic changes they are visible from space. <\/p>\n Numerous Indian waterways have met the same fate, including the Mayurakshi, Kollidam, Subarnarekha, and Ajay Rivers.<\/p>\n Sand mining has progressively altered the Paran\u00e1 and Tocantins Rivers in Brazil, which are part of the Amazon Basin.<\/p>\n Mining pits in the Seine River in France, dredged in the early 20th century, persist as floodplain lakes to this day.<\/p>\n Yet international demand for river aggregates has grown drastically in the past two decades.<\/p>\n “Sand and gravel are the world’s most heavily extracted solid materials and are fundamental to urbanization and infrastructure development,” Edward Park, a geographer at NTU Singapore and the study’s lead author, told ScienceAlert.<\/p>\n “Together, they account for more than 70 percent of concrete by volume and are widely used in concrete, asphalt, roads, buildings, and foundations,” Park continued. <\/p>\n “River sand is particularly valued for construction because its grains commonly provide suitable friction and because it is generally non-saline.”<\/p>\n It’s the interlocking grains of river sand that make it particularly suitable for land reclamation. It’s not shifty, like desert sand<\/a>, or salty, like marine sand.<\/p>\n “Construction companies, property developers, and infrastructure contractors benefit from access to an essential raw material for concrete, roads, housing, and land development,” Park said.<\/p>\n “However, these benefits must be weighed against environmental and social costs, and in poorly governed areas, illegal operators and corrupt officials may capture a disproportionate share of the profits while river-dependent communities bear the damage.”<\/p>\n The review revealed that many countries don’t even have access to the data they would need to balance their economic needs against the environmental and social impact.<\/p>\n “Extraction should be restricted to carefully selected locations and volumes based on river sediment budgets and natural replenishment rates,” Tran said. <\/p>\n Of the studies reviewed, only 27 percent actually mapped the extent of the mining, and only 24 percent investigated the socioeconomic factors driving demand.<\/p>\n “Improved monitoring, stronger enforcement against illegal mining, seasonal extraction limits, and sustainable mining zones would further reduce environmental damage,” Park told ScienceAlert.<\/p>\n Related: 80% of Earth’s Rivers Are Quickly Losing Oxygen, Study Reveals<\/a><\/p>\n “Meaningful reductions are achievable, but they will require coordinated technological, regulatory, and demand-management measures rather than relying on a single solution.”<\/p>\n The research was published in Reviews of Geophysics<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Rachel Garner<\/a> and edited by Clare Watson<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All over the world, industrial sand mining is extracting river sediment much, much faster than Earth’s natural cycles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,2967,128],"class_list":["post-844079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-msft-content","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785910698_699_0.jpg\")
frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-1195149552-1013x675.jpg\")
River sand is excavated in Qingdao, China. (Peng Song\/Moment\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/nasa-poyang-lake-1154x675.png\")
In just 18 years, China’s Poyang Lake was drastically changed by sand mining. (NASA Earth Observatory<\/a>)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Annual-global-demand-for-river-sand-and-gravel-from-2000-to-2024.jpg\")
Annual global demand for river sand and gravel from 2000 to 2024. (Park et al., Reviews of Geophysics, 2026)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Volume-of-sand-and-gravel-consumed-in-2023-by-the-eight-largest-consuming-countries-across-the-six-c.jpeg\")
Volume of sand and gravel consumed in 2023 by the eight largest-consuming countries across the six continents. (Park et al., Reviews of Geophysics, 2026) <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-583562260.jpg\")
A worker watches a sand excavator along the Mekong River in Laos, dredging sand to make cement. (Lillian Suwanrumpha\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Subscribe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/FOMO-1200x628-_Dont-miss-the-next-breakthrough_-cosmic-colourful-642x336.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n