The opening scenes of the famous movie Planet of the Apes (dir.: Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968) show a desolate landscape in which a group of scientists walks under the watchful eye of armed apes.
These images of parched lands were filmed, in 1967, in the bed of what was beginning to be the Powell Reservoir, formed from the Glen Canyon Dam, which was completed in 1963 but was not operational -due to lack of water- up to 17 years later.
Charlton Heston and a screenshot of the opening scenes of ‘Planet of the Apes’, at Powell Reservoir as a natural setting.
If 20th Century Fox wanted to recall those sequences at the same point on the Colorado River, in Arizona (United States), it would have enough facilities to do so because the misnamed Lake Powell is again in low hours; in very shallow water to be more exact.
Earth is better seen from space
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released this week a collection of images captured by satellites, within the Observing the Earth project of the Copernicus program, in which the loss of water reserves in this Arizona reservoir, the second largest, is clearly observed. largest in the United States in the last five years.
Powell Reservoir reserves between 2018 and 2022
The animation (GIF) released by ESA shows the changes in the surface area of the reservoir near Bullfrog Marina, approximately 155 km north of the Glen Canyon Dam, between March 2018 and March 2022. The dry conditions and falling water levels are unmistakable in the image captured on March 18, 2022, compared to the 2018 coastline outlined in the image in yellow.
Comparison of the Powell Reservoir between 2018 and 2022.
climate change in action
“After decades of drought, water levels in Lake Powell, the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States, have dropped to their lowest level since it was created more than 50 years ago, threatening millions of people. of people who depend on its water supply. Satellite images allow us to take a closer look at the decline in lake water levels in the midst of the climate crisis”, highlights the ESA in an informative note that accompanies the satellite images .
Straddling the border of southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona, Lake Powell is a major reservoir in the Colorado River basin. The Colorado River, through which Lake Powell flows, was dammed in Glen Canyon in the early 1960s. The lake provides water to approximately 40 million people, irrigates more than 5 million acres of land, and has capacity to generate more than 4,200 megawatts of hydroelectric electricity.
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In mid-March 2022, Lake Powell’s elevation dropped to a staggering 1,074m above sea level, the lowest since it was filled in 1980. This drastic drop in water levels is documented in images at natural color captured by Sentinel-2 satellite, of the Copernicus program.
The ESA recalls that, in addition to the lack of water contributions, according to a report compiled by the United States Geological Survey, Lake Powell has lost almost 7% of its potential storage capacity between 1963 and 2018 due to the accumulation of sediments.
Emblase Powell
The European agency also mentions data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States that indicates that this spring almost 60% of the continental territory of this country is experiencing drought.
These conditions are likely to continue in more than half of the continental United States through at least June, depleting water supplies and increasing the risk of wildfires. While these conditions are not new, NOAA expects them to potentially worsen in the coming months, the ESA says.
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