Lake Mead is the largest reservoir of water in the United States, in terms of volume. This artificial lake in the American West, located in Nevada and Arizona, is inexorably drying up. Its level drops and even reveals human bones. This is the consequence of an intense drought that has affected the region for regarding twenty years now.
The vast body of water stretches at the foot of arid, jagged hills, a rocky landscape typical of the American West. Lake Mead is located regarding fifty kilometers from Las Vegas, the gambling capital and large city of Nevada, in the United States. This is the largest water reservoir in the country, in terms of volume. Only here: the region undergoes an intense drought and the level of the water drops, even revealing human bones. They might be those of people killed by the underworld decades ago, whose lifeless bodies were dumped here not to be found. Here is everything you need to know regarding this body of water located between the states of Nevada and Arizona, and which is one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, as the encyclopedia recalls. Britannica.
Its lowest level since 1937
Lake Mead was built on the Colorado, a long river that rises in the Rocky Mountains and empties into the Gulf of California. It is located upstream of the Hoover dam, a huge structure whose lake is actually a reservoir, specifies the national park service United States (National Park Service, NPS). Its construction was completed in 1936.
Read also: United States. A skeleton found in a rusty canister on a dry shore of Lake Mead
In the same year, 1936, the authorities established the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, a huge space that includes beaches and marinas, among other things. Eight million visitors go there every year, says the encyclopedia. Britannica.
But the level of the reservoir drops inexorably: it has never been so low since 1937, indicated the American daily USA Todaybeginning of May 2022.
“Mega-drought”
If the level of the lake is falling, it is due to the chronic drought that has affected the south-west of the North American continent for 22 years now. It’s regarding a “mega-drought”in other words, which has been going on for two decades or more, explains the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
This mega-drought is the largest known since the year 800, more than 1,200 years. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from UCLA and Columbia University, published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change last February.
With climate change, droughts are becoming more intense: rising temperatures promote the phenomenon of water evaporation, which dries out the soil and vegetation. Between 2000 and 2021, temperatures in the region were on average 0.91°C higher than during the period 1950-1991, indicates the United States National Integrated Drought Information System (National Integrated Drought Information System, NIDIS).
