Colorado Rivers

Record-breaking wildfires in 2020 turned huge swaths of Western forests into barren burn scars. Those forests store winter snowpack that millions of people rely on for drinking and irrigation water. But with such large and wide-reaching fires, the science on the short-term and long-term effects to the region’s water supplies isn’t well understood.

All signs are pointing to a dry start to 2021 across much of the Colorado River watershed, which provides water to about 40 million people in the Western U.S.

Traveling along western rivers can give a glimpse into the power of erosion. The region’s deepest canyons were formed by moving water. But if you look closer, you can also see the ways humans have tried to control that process for their benefit, including some unconventional methods from decades ago that are still affecting waterways today.

Use it or lose it.That saying is at the heart of how access to water is managed in the western U.S. Laws that govern water in more arid states, like…

The number of deaths and accidents on Colorado’s rivers is right around normal for a high flow year, according to data from the conservation group…

Groundwater pumping is causing rivers and small streams throughout the country to decline, according to a new study from researchers at the Colorado…

Early season snowfall in some parts of the Colorado River Basin have raised hopes of a drought recovery. But that optimism is likely premature.In…

The effects of climate change are already being felt at the headwaters of the West’s most important river system, according to a study released earlier…

A menace lurks beneath the snow high up in the southern Rocky Mountains.At first glance it seems innocuous, another piece of a dynamic alpine ecosystem,…

In 2014, the Colorado River did something it hadn’t done in decades. For a few short weeks that spring, the overdrawn, overallocated river reached the…