Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the 22-year megadrought affecting the West would not only intensify but also move eastward.
The experts said that a two-pronged approach that includes climate change mitigation and better water management policies will be crucial as bodies of water continue to dry up. But so much damage has already been done, that even drastic improvements or reductions in emissions will not immediately impact reducing the stress on water levels, they said.
Much of the region surrounding the Mississippi River is experiencing conditions between abnormally dry and severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. By 2017, the lake had lost half of its water since the first settler arrived in 1847, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. It is now one-third of its original capacity and has reached unsustainable levels, researchers told PBS.
Animals and plants near the lake are already bearing the burden of the dry-up, Kyle Stone, a wildlife biologist for the state of Utah, told ABC News. The salinity in the water is increasing as water levels drop, killing algae, a source for brine shrimp, which serves as food for more than 10 million birds that stop at the lake during their migration patterns, Stone said.
The tens of thousands of fish eventually sucked up all of the oxygen in the low water levels of the creek. Once they were rendered immobile and began to die off, the ammonia left in the water exacerbated the mass death event. Photos of a portion of Interstate 90 near Kearney, Nebraska, show a completely dehydrated river bed under a bridge that was previously filled with river water.
While it is not unusual for the river to go dry during the irrigation season, experts are monitoring the river downstream of Columbus as an indicator of the overall health of the river, Jason Farnsworth, executive director of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, told KLKN.Supplies of drinking water continue to dwindle in the West
This is a great story regarding how climate change is impacting the availability of water, today and going forward. Scary!
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