In the early twenty-first century, Lake Powell faced the combined threats of drought and rapid water withdrawals.
Published May 13, 2009
Heavy winter and spring snowfall provided much-needed meltwater, but the effects of long-term drought mean the lake is nowhere near its highs from the 1980s and 90s.
Published Oct 1, 2019
In spring 2014, visitors to Lake Powell will find beaches and rock formations that are usually underwater. After several years of drought, the reservoir has dropped below 50 percent capacity.
Published May 22, 2014
In August 2010, Lake Mead reached its lowest level since 1956, the result of a persistent drought and increasing human demand.
Published Sep 23, 2010
Surging with fresh water from heavy winter snow melt, Lake Powell rose significantly in the summer of 2011 after many years of low levels.
Published Aug 12, 2011
The last decade has been rough for the reservoir at the heart of the intricate water storage system that sustains the American Southwest.
Published May 10, 2013
Ongoing drought and diminished snowpack in the Rockies have combined with increasing demands downstream to cause the great reservoir to drop to historically low levels.
Published Aug 1, 2014
In this reservoir along the Colorado River at the Arizona-Nevada border, water levels rise and fall with the seasons each year.
Published Oct 18, 2019
In May 2016, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam reached its lowest level since the 1930s.
Published May 27, 2016
The water within a large, key reservoir in the southwestern United States has fallen to levels not seen since the 1930s.
Published Aug 18, 2015
For more than 100 years, groups in the western United States have fought over water. During the 1880s, sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers argued over drinking water for their livestock on the high plains. In 1913, the city of Los Angeles began to draw water away from small agricultural communities in Owen Valley, leaving a dusty dry lake bed. In the late 1950s, construction of the Glen Canyon Dam catalyzed the American environmental movement. Today, farmers are fighting fishermen, environmentalists, and Native American tribes over the water in the Upper Klamath River Basin. The Landsat 7 satellite, launched by NASA and operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, documented an extreme drought in the area along the California/Oregon border in the spring of 2001.
Published Sep 8, 2001
Man and nature have both altered the course of a southwestern U.S. river.
Published May 21, 2012
Drought has struck a huge reservoir on the border Zambia and Zimbabwe, reducing the hydro power supply from Kariba dam .
Published Feb 12, 2016
In October 2016, one of America’s largest lakes reached its lowest level on record.
Published Nov 3, 2016
In the 1950s, construction began on the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River in northern Arizona. The dam created Lake Powell: a long, skinny, meandering reservoir straddling the Arizona-Utah border. Ingenuity of human design, however, did not protect this massive reservoir from the drought that struck much of the southwestern United States between 2000 and 2007.
Published Oct 17, 2007
Low water levels on this Mozambique reservoir betrayed signs of drought stress in August 2016.
Published Aug 16, 2016
Nearly six years of regional drought and rapidly increasing demand for water have resulted in decreasing water levels in lakes throughout East Africa. The flooded regions of the Toshka Lakes west of Lake Nasser have decreased greatly over the years, exposing the former dune fields, and leaving a “bath-tub ring” of wetlands (dark region) surrounding the lake shorelines.
Published Jan 9, 2006
