Why the Colorado river is drying up – and what we can do about it

The Colorado stream is the lifeblood of the US south-west, but contiguous it is drastically depleted owed to overuse, megadrought and clime change. Here’s however to rescue it

Environment 22 November 2022

By Chelsea Whyte

Water levels astatine Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir successful the US, are falling fast

Michael Friberg

“The stream was obscurity and everywhere,” wrote naturalist Aldo Leopold of the Colorado stream delta, the portion wherever waters originating successful the Rocky Mountains meander into the Gulf of California successful Mexico. Having explored the country by canoe successful 1922, Leopold described the immense wetlands arsenic a swirl of “a 100 greenish lagoons”, “awesome jungles” and “lovely groves”.

A period later, Leopold wouldn’t recognise the delta. The lagoons person mostly turned to dust arsenic a bid of elephantine dams prevented the stream from reaching the oversea reliably for the past fewer decades. “The drying up of the stream is surely an denotation that thing incorrect is happening,” says Karl Flessa, a hydrologist astatine the University of Arizona.

Upstream, the Colorado has been drastically depleted. That is partially down to the information that radical are taking excessively overmuch h2o retired of the stream basin and partially down to a megadrought, exacerbated by clime change, which means the portion the Colorado flows done is the driest it has been successful 1200 years.

Now, the river’s plight has reached situation point. Last year, the US national authorities for the archetypal clip declared a h2o shortage astatine Lake Mead, a reservoir created by damming the Colorado, triggering cuts successful proviso to farmers. Some researchers are adjacent voicing concerns that the …