22+ hour, 28+ min ago   (333+ words) A 2014 netting survey found native salmonids recovering. Water-quality readings were similar before and after treatment, and surveys found comparable invertebrate diversity. Alaska Fish and Game now records the invasive northern pike population as successfully removed. The Indiana Department of Natural…...

3+ day, 20+ hour ago   (1392+ words) Here is what actually happens, in order, when the snow fails twice. Not a metaphor. Colorado's snowpack stores roughly 15 million acre-feet of water at its spring peak, which is a volume comparable to a major reservoir, and it releases that…...

5+ day, 18+ hour ago   (745+ words) WorldAtlas According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2012 National Lakes Assessment, an estimated 48% of the roughly 111,119 lakes across the lower 48 states are reservoirs, meaning water impounded behind a dam rather than a basin that filled on its own. So when you…...

5+ day, 20+ hour ago   (1231+ words) Here is what happened in 1983, why the fix worked, and why the spillways have sat dry through an era when the fear runs entirely the other way. Glen Canyon Dam has three ways to pass water. Turbines send it through…...

5+ day, 22+ hour ago   (835+ words) WorldAtlas Turn on the tap in most American cities and you are basically drinking a river or a reservoir. But a surprising number of major cities drink almost nothing but water pumped straight out of the ground, hauled up from…...

6+ day, 16+ hour ago   (1094+ words) Here are the springs that produce river-scale flow, and the geology that lets them do it. Hydrologists classify springs by discharge, and the top tier has a specific threshold. A first-magnitude spring produces at least 100 cubic feet per second, which…...

6+ day, 23+ hour ago   (778+ words) WorldAtlas Beneath the Great Plains sits one of the largest underground water reserves on the planet, the Ogallala Aquifer, and it quietly did something remarkable: it turned a semi-arid grassland into America's breadbasket. The trouble is that it is being…...

1+ week, 15+ hour ago   (1102+ words) One note on counting. Total species, species per river mile and species per square mile of drainage give three different winners, and all three are worth knowing. Start with the basin rather than any single river, because the basin figure…...

1+ week, 23+ hour ago   (576+ words) These sea lampreys caused immense damage to the fish populations in the Great Lakes, especially lake trout. A single sea lamprey can kill up to 40 pounds of fish during its 12- to 18-month feeding stage. In Lake Superior, overfishing and lamprey…...