A River Renewed
In spring 2014, residents of Mexico’s San Luis Rio Colorado got a rare glimpse of a river as it used to be. For a few months at least, the parched bottom of the Colorado River has more than its usual trickle of water. A newly revived river has enough water to kayak on and to splash and wade in. You can even see it from space.
Prior to 2014, the lower reaches of the Colorado had virtually disappeared due to demand for water from the United States and Mexico. Normally, all of the river’s flow gets diverted at the Morelos Dam into a network of channels used to irrigate farms in northern Mexico. This year, the surge of water came as a result of Minute 319, an agreement between Mexican and U.S. water and land-management agencies to recharge groundwater and restore habitats along the river.
Beginning on March 23, 2014, a “pulse flow” began with the release of 130 million cubic meters (105,000 acre-feet) of water into the Colorado’s natural channel over an eight week period. Though it sounds like a significant amount of water, it is only 1 percent of what used to flow naturally during spring floods.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this view of the Colorado near San Luis Rio