This image highlights the generally arid setting of the Colorada River delta estuary at its terminus and at low tide.
The Colorado River is the largest watershed in the southwestern US, emptying into the Salton Trough before reaching the Sea of Cortez. Over the past 2-3 million years, river sediments built a delta that extends from the US-Mexico border for a distance of 87 miles (140 km). However, today the Colorado River delta is undergoing significant erosion and diminishing in size due to the lack of sediment replenishment from upstream sources. Prior to impoundment of water from upstream dams the delta provided habitat for a wide variety of species including shrimp, corvina fish, and vaquita porpoise. Captions and Image source: Earth Observatory / NASA
Excerpts;
A trickle of water is being returned to a few parts of the dried-out delta—and those parts are blooming. Thanks to a bi-national agreement, a “pulse flow” of water eventually made its way to the sea, the first time the Colorado River reached the Gulf of California in years…
Read Full Article, National Geographic
The Colorado River Returns to the Sea, National Geographic (05-29-2014)
More than eight weeks after the he Morelos Dam on the Arizona-Mexico border was opened to allow a “pulse flow” , which began on March 23, and now nearing its end, the Colorado River, after coursing through its delta, touched the Sea of Cortez…
Relief for a Parched Delta, The New York Times (04-17-2013)
Thanks to dams that throttled the Colorado and diverted its water to fuel the rise of the American West, the river has effectively ended at the Mexican border. The Colorado delta, once a lush network of freshwater and marine wetlands and meandering river channels and a haven for fish, migrating birds and other wildlife, is largely a parched wasteland…
Protect the World’s Deltas, Nature (12-07-2014)
The rich delta ecosystem and the services it provides, storm protection, nutrient and pollution removal and carbon storage, are being destroyed. Worldwide deltas are on course to drown, starved of sediment by dams and dikes, and fragmented by economic development. Rising seas compound the sediment crisis…
World’s Largest Dam Removal Unleashes U.S. River, NBC news, (08-27-2014)
River Reborn: Elwha Flows Wild and Free Once Again..
DamNation; a Documentary That’s Testing the Waters of Corporate Social Responsibility; From Felt Soul Media
DamNation is a feature documentary, shown this week at SXSW in Austin, Tx. DamNation’s majestic cinematography and unexpected discoveries move through rivers and landscapes altered by dams, but also through a metamorphosis in values, from conquest of the natural world to knowing ourselves as part of nature…
Let’s Talk About Sand: Denis Delestrac At TEDxBarcelona
Denis Delestrac latest feature documentary, “Sand Wars” is an epic eco-thriller that takes the audience around the globe to unveil a new gold rush and a disturbing fact: we are running out of sand! In this TEDxBarcelona talk, he explains us where sand comes from and where it ends up…
