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
The fast-growing city has polluted waterways and a growing demand for clean tap water.
Published Apr 11, 2017
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
Reservoirs, lakes, and mountainsides are brimming with water and snow, though scientists caution that underground aquifers are a long way from having the same bounty.
Published Apr 21, 2017
Dark brown squares mark fields that would ordinarily support irrigated crops in California’s Central Valley in this vegetation image. In 2009, a lack of water meant that the crops were not growing well or the fields lay fallow.
Published Aug 16, 2009
The Golden State’s largest reservoir has warmed and become depleted over the past decade.
Published Jun 26, 2015
A new study found that the abundance of these floating plants has increased due to urbanization.
Published Sep 2, 2020
Water has stopped pouring from the broken wall of the Sardoba Reservoir, but many areas are still submerged.
Published May 11, 2020
Natural vegetation and irrigated farmland along the Snake River Plain in Idaho use dramatically different amounts of water during the growing season.
Published Jan 26, 2010
An arid region grew even drier between 2003 and 2009 due to human consumption of water for drinking and agriculture.
Published Mar 13, 2013
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
The volume of water in New Mexico’s largest reservoir has dropped to historic lows due to drought and persistent demand.
Published Jul 26, 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 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
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