A Changing Landscape

by

Haven’t we been told for a long time that our landscape would transform around us, that it would shift before our eyes?

Consider Yellowstone National Park in Montana.

Just as a television series was popularizing it and many well-to-do flocking there, making it a suddenly chic place, an epic flood hit.

Reports the Weather Channel, “‘The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours,’ Park County commissioner Bill Berg said, according to The Associated Press. ‘A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events, and it’s just not very handy when it happens while we’re all here settled on it.’ Some of the northern section of Yellowstone National Park, where flooding was the worst, may be closed for the remainder of the season.”

National Geographic: adds: “Yellowstone National Park evacuated more than 10,000 visitors on Tuesday after flash floods roared through the park. Roads and bridges washed away, sewage lines broke, and the park’s gateway communities were cut off from roads. Even as scientists and land managers are taken aback by the magnitude of the floods, unprecedented in 100 years of recorded history, they recognize the similarities to the events their data predicted. They just weren’t anticipating them to occur this year. As a scientist I would say, well, this is completely in line with what we might expect,’ says Cathy Whitlock, a paleoclimatologist and lead author of the Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment, the first such report ever done on an ecosystem. ‘As a human being I would say I’m shocked.’”

We’re not.

More is to come.

More already arriving (for those with ears to hear and eyes to see).

How about that Lake Powell in Utah?

The federal government will make the unprecedented move to hold back water in drought-stricken Lake Powell | Colorado Public Radio

Vacationing Family Discovers Shipwreck Historically low Water Level Lake Powell | AccuWeather

A rockfall crashes into Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the country, on Memorial Day.

Or as we have previously noted, in Nevada, Lake Mead?

Dropping Lake Mead water levels stand out during holiday weekend | KSNV

Lakes are actually vanishing.

So are some creeks and rivers, such as the Po in Italy, where water is so low in large stretches of Italy’s largest river that local residents are walking through the middle of the expanse of sand and shipwrecks are resurfacing, says Associated Press.

People fish near a hydroelectric power plant at Isola Serafini, on the Po river in San Nazzaro, Italy, Wednesday, June 15, 2022. The drying up of the river is jeopardizing drinking water in Italy's densely populated and highly industrialized districts and threatening irrigation in the most intensively farmed part of the country. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Few expected such drama quite so fast.

The Great Salt Lake?

Great Salt Lake is shrinking fast. Scientists demand action before it becomes a toxic dustbin - CNN

Or we’re turning our water into toxic pools.

Folks on Instagram love this turquoise lake in Siberia (Novosibirsk), but it’s actually a coal plant’s waste pond; upon contact the water irritates the skin.

Is there a future for the Dead Sea?

Hopefully.

Kayakers visit a slumped sinkhole on the Dead Sea Coast.

You get the point.

Nature is speaking. Or is the verb “groaning”; in some instances, is nature letting out a shriek?

[resources: Michael Brown retreat]