In May 2016, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam reached its lowest level since the 1930s.
Published May 27, 2016
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
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
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 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 the early twenty-first century, Lake Powell faced the combined threats of drought and rapid water withdrawals.
Published May 13, 2009
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
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
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
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
This April 7, 2010, image from Landsat 5 shows water levels in Lake Powell on the Colorado River.
Published May 12, 2010
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
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
In October 2016, one of America’s largest lakes reached its lowest level on record.
Published Nov 3, 2016
Long and short. Deep and shallow. Salty and fresh. Blue and brown. These are Africa’s Lake Tanganyika and Lake Rukwa.
Published Jun 20, 2019
The Golden State’s largest reservoir has warmed and become depleted over the past decade.
Published Jun 26, 2015
The Great Salt Lake of northern Utah is a remnant of glacial Lake Bonneville that extended over much of present-day western Utah and into the neighboring states of Nevada and Idaho approximately 32,000 to 14,000 years ago. The north arm of the lake, displayed in this astronaut photograph from April 30, 2007, typically has twice the salinity of the rest of the lake due to impoundment of water by a railroad causeway that crosses the lake from east to west. The causeway restricts water flow, and the separation has led to a striking division in the types of algae and bacteria found in the north and south arms of the lake.
Published Jul 16, 2007
