Recently Published Research

A full accounting of where the Colorado River water goes en route to its delta can aid design of strategies and plans for bringing water use into balance with available supplies, according to new research.

This paper provides an analysis of the accuracy and bias of the 24-Month Study projections for future Lake Powell inflows and elevations and finds that in some years, the most probable projected inflows were higher than what actually occurred by as much a...

Predictions of river channel adjustment to changes in streamflow regime based on relations between mean channel characteristics and mean flood magnitude can be useful to evaluate average channel response.

Many canyon‐bound rivers have downstream flow and water temperatures modified. In some regions, climate change is expected to cause lower storage in reservoirs and warmer release temperatures, which may further alter downstream flow and thermal regimes.

The sediment supply within a river system evolves depending on the discharge, flood frequency and duration, changes in sediment input, and ecohydraulic conditions that modify sediment transport processes.

Channels change in response to natural and human-caused fluctuations in streamflow and sediment. Predicting how the channel might change from alterations in streamflow and sediment supply is an important and challenging part of managing a river system.

The lower Green River episodically narrowed between the mid-1930s and present day through deposition of new floodplains within a wider channel that had been established and/or maintained during the early twentieth century pluvial period.

The American West, while steeped in mythology, is also a region that depends heavily on science for its long-term livability—and perhaps no one was quicker to realize that than John Wesley Powell.

An estimate of a river’s natural flow regime is useful for water resource planning and ecosystem rehabilitation by providing insight into the predisturbance form and function of a river.

The Fill Mead First (FMF) plan would establish Lake Mead reservoir as the primary water storage facility of the main-stem Colorado River and would relegate Lake Powell reservoir to a secondary water storage facility to be used only when Lake Mead is full....

Abstract Since the 1940s, the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region has undergone long periods of channel narrowing, which have been occasionally interrupted by rare, large floods that widen the channel (termed a channel reset).

We conducted stratigraphic, sedimentologic, and dendrogeomorphic analyses within two long floodplain trenches to precisely reconstruct the timing and processes of recent floodplain formation.

Over the last century, large-scale water development of the upper Rio Grande in the US and Mexico, and of the Rio Conchos in Mexico, has resulted in progressive channel narrowing of the lower Rio Grande in the Big Bend region.