The origins and future of the Grand Canyon

How old is the Grand Canyon? Will the Colorado River run dry? Learn about how the Big Ditch formed, and the present state and uncertain future of the Colorado River watershed at a free online event, recorded on Wednesday June 29, 2022
Expert speakers included:
- Laura Crossey, University of New Mexico
- Karl Karlstrom, University of New Mexico
- Crystal Tulley-Cordova, Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources
Moderated by Emily Underwood, Knowable Magazine.
This event is part of an ongoing series of live events and science journalism from Knowable Magazine and Annual Reviews, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society. Funding provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Learn more:
- "A deeper understanding of the Grand Canyon," Knowable Magazine: knowmag.org/3OvdyAH
- "Tectonics of the Colorado Plateau and Its Margins," Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences knowmag.org/Karlstrom
- Additional readings: knowmag.org/3HYFnip

[@briseboy]

Of course, the peoples, ALL of the lives of lower Colorado Derlta, have been seriously impacted by the allocation and transport of the Basin's water AWAY from the northern Golfo de California, changing that ecosystem until the situation can be righted.
The summer monsoons shift, like slow, irregular windshield wipers, from New Mexico's Sky Island region an d southern Rockies to the Great Basin and Range lands as far as Mojave desert and ranges. These magnificent, sere landscapes host several ecotypes.
The mines of the west, it might be of value to repeat, mine ores, which are first selected, then condensed at mining areas, with extraction from the ores.
This leaves "tailings" having very large proportions of , for example uranium, of which most is slowly actively changing through different radioactive substances.
Such concentrations do not disappear, but remain subject to the activity of water with its ionic effects dissolving any element into solution, then transporting it . Hydrologists understand that "all water is one", being in continuous cycle. As rivers and lakes lower, more groundwater drains into them, transported from its basin.
The metals, like Uranium, originally rock, crushed during the mining process, vastly increase the suspended material, solutes, which is why it is pollution and not natural to the water solution that naturally occurred.
The solutions are many orders of magnitude greater than waters flowing over hard rock, especially normally , like uranium, at layers below groundwater, or if in uplift, not worn or corroded to the extent that mining and processing induce.
The actual term for this region, and western SD , eastern WY, used when uranium became valuable, was "National Sacrifice Area", because the pollutive effects were understood.
Uranium is such a "hot" commodity, that russia, Australia, and some other nations export, and USA has imported.
Even to us young less than half the age, were shocked that Navajo miners tended all to die by age 55 or so, though mining is touted as bringing "jobs"
As one who has been in several deserts, some having NO precipitation for 6 years, every species of plant , every species of animal, are captivating, alive. This assists in humans not acculturated into absolute psychopathic self-interest, in feeling connection with EACH life, including the indigenous flora and fauna, as well as th ancient ways along which migrating individuals of so many species traveled with the seasons.
It may be that too few cultures retain egalitarian reverence for each living organism one encounters.
I hope that we all will make the effort to express ecological views always in terms that recognize this equal validity, rather than in exploitative terminology.
Our DNA was merely selected differently than that of others, but it remains the SAME DNA of the original organisms from which we all spring. Consider this descent and essential identity, instead of perception in exploitative terms.