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About Philip Minderhoud

Dr. Philip S.J. Minderhoud, PhD is an expert in land subsidence and hydrogeology at Deltares. He is specialized in land subsidence and relative sea-level rise in coastal-deltaic areas, connecting the fields of geology, hydrogeology, geotechnical engineering, numerical modelling and remote sensing.

His work focuses on increasing the fundamental understanding of processes and drivers of deltaic subsidence and developing the numerical capacities to provide better spatial-temporal assessments of current and projections of future deltaic subsidence.

He is also an awarded university professor who supervised over 35 individual Postdocs, PhD, Graduate and undergraduate students and thrives for his pupils to reach their highest potential and achieve their career ambitions.

With his focus on international and impact-orientated research aiming to create awareness and research uptake, and he is actively engaging with policymakers and governmental organisations to facilitate science-to-policy translation and jointly develop strategies to cope with ongoing land subsidence and accelerated sea-level rise.

He is a prime experts on the Mekong delta and is leading international research projects in deltas around the world (Asia, Africa (Gulf of Guinea), Europa and Oceania). and an active member of the UNESCO’s Land Subsidence International Initiative.

In addition, he has initiated the formation of the International Panel on Land Subsidence (IPLS) aiming to bring together the different scientific disciplines working on coastal vertical land motion and to improve future IPCC’s sea-level rise projections through the proper inclusion of vertical land motion and coastal subsidence.

Additional positions outside Deltares:

  • Wageningen University & Research, Department of Environmental Sciences - Assoc Professor in Land subsidence and Coastal-deltaic systems
  • University of Padova, Italy, Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (ICEA. Affiliated researcher

Publications

  1. Save the Mekong Delta from drowning

    Science 376, 6593. doi:10.1126/science.abm5176

    Kondolf, G. M., Schmitt, R. J. P., Carling, P. A., Goichot, M., Keskinen, M., Arias, M. E., Bizzi, S., Castelletti, A., Cochrane, T. A., Darby, S. E., Kummu, M., Minderhoud, P. S. J., Nguyen, D., Nguyen, H. T., Nguyen, N. T., Oeurng, C., Opperman, J., Rubin, Z., San, D. C., Schmeier, S, Wild, T. (2022).

  2. Delta sustainability from the Holocene to the Anthropocene and envisioning the future

    Nature Sustainability.

    Anthony, E., Syvitski, J., Zăinescu, F., Nicholls, R. J., Cohen, K. M., Marriner, N., Saito, Y., Day, J., Minderhoud, P. S. J., Amorosi, A., Chen, Z., Morhange, C., Tamura, T., Vespremeanu-Stroe, A., Besset, M., Sabatier, F., Kaniewski, D., & Maselli, V. (2024)

  3. Mekong delta much lower than previously assumed in sea-level rise impact assessments.

    Nature Communications. Doi:10.1038/s41467-019-11602-1.

    Minderhoud, P.S.J., Coumou, L., Erkens, G., Middelkoop, H., Stouthamer, E. (2019)

  4. Sedimentation strategies provide effective but limited mitigation of relative sea-level rise in the Mekong delta.

    Nature Communications Earth & Environment. doi:10.1038/s43247-021-00331-3

    Dunn, F.E., Minderhoud, P.S.J. (2022)

  5. Measuring, modelling and projecting coastal land subsidence

    Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 2, 1. doi:10.1038/s43017-020-00115-x

    Shirzaei, M., Freymueller, J., Törnqvist, T.E., Galloway, D.L., Dura, T., Minderhoud, P.S.J. (2020)

  6. Data, knowledge, and modeling challenges for science-informed management of river deltas

    One Earth, 6(3), 216-235.

    Schmitt, R.J.P. & Minderhoud, P.S.J. (2023)

  7. Impacts of 25 years of groundwater extraction on subsidence in the Mekong delta, Vietnam

    Environmental Research Letters 12, 6. Doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa7146

    Minderhoud, P.S.J., Erkens, G., Pham, V.H., Bui, V.T., Erban, L., Kooi, H., Stouthamer, E. (2017)

  8. Projections of extraction-induced subsidence and elevation of the Mekong delta for the 21th century.

    Environmental Research Communications. doi:10.1088/2515-7620/ab5e21

    Minderhoud, P.S.J., Middelkoop, H., Erkens, G., Stouthamer, E. (2020)

Projects

  1. Freshwater Availability in Mekong Delta (FAME)

    Freshwater Availability in the Mekong Delta (FAME) is a collaborative, multiphase project focusing on scoping, piloting and providing upscaling advice to national partners in Vietnam on the implementation of shallow Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) systems. These systems could provide farm-scale solutions to address the water-quality and…

    24 October 2019

  2. Serious game for groundwater extraction negotiations in Vietnam

    Livelihoods in the world's deltas, including the Mekong delta, are threatened by anthropogenic and climate factors. Upstream dam construction and overextraction of water and sediment resources lead to droughts, accelerated land subsidence, deterioration of water quality and salinisation of water resources. One of the main problems mentioned in…

    16 October 2024

  3. Can the Mekong Delta be saved from drowning?

  4. Land subsidence in deltas and coastal areas

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