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 the early twenty-first century, Lake Powell faced the combined threats of drought and rapid water withdrawals.
Published May 13, 2009
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
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 May 2016, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam reached its lowest level since the 1930s.
Published May 27, 2016
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
This April 7, 2010, image from Landsat 5 shows water levels in Lake Powell on the Colorado River.
Published May 12, 2010
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
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
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 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
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
Floodwaters have worked their way through a series of parched channels, watering holes, and lagoons to start filling the iconic Australian lake.
Published May 28, 2019
In October 2016, one of America’s largest lakes reached its lowest level on record.
Published Nov 3, 2016
After four years of shrinking due to drought, the largest reservoir in California got a much-needed boost from El Niño-fueled winter precipitation.
Published Apr 7, 2016
Astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle and Space Station have tracked regional environmental changes spanning decades. Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake, serves as one example of an area experiencing significant changes that have been well documented from space. Over the past twenty years, the lake’s water levels have decreased in conjunction with increasing development from the fast-growing city of Guadalajara.
Published Aug 30, 2004
