You don’t need me to tell you that the Grand Canyon is magnificent. Otherworldly. Sublime. But, having rafted through 90 miles of the canyon with a group of scientists and grad students, I can tell you that it’s quite a bit more fragile, and less permanent, than you might think.
I wrote an article about the canyon this week in The Times. If you’ve seen it only from the rim or in photos, you probably think of the place as a bunch of rocks stretching to the horizon. Dramatically sculpted, gorgeously layered rocks. But still, rocks. Rocks are ancient, eternal, unchanging, at least for any species that thinks in years and decades.
It was something far more transient, however, that cut a chasm into all that rock. The Colorado River is the water knife that gravity dragged through the landscape over millions of years. Then, humans came along and started building dams to control the Colorado. This is when the canyon began to change.
For the last six decades, the Glen Canyon Dam, which sits 15 miles upstream of the Grand Canyon, has been stopping the river from carrying in the enormous quantities of sand and silt that it picks up in the Rockies. Without this sediment, the riverside beaches where boaters pitch their tents have been shrinking, some of them significantly. The dam has also blocked large floods from cascading through, with vegetation now growing thick on the riverbanks. And it has warped the canyon’s water temperatures, wreaking havoc on fish populations.
The river in the canyon, in short, has become a highly unnatural environment, “like an irrigation canal, except that it’s got rapids in it,” as Jack Schmidt, the director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, told me.
Why does this matter? For one, all of these changes in the canyon could intensify if the Colorado River keeps shrinking and we don’t figure out a way to use its water more sustainably. If the river is low for long periods in the coming decades, many of the canyon’s rapids could become more dangerous for the large motorboats used by tour companies.
But to me, all this also shows that, even in such a wild, remote and protected place, human intervention as simple as regulating the river can have sweeping environmental effects. It shows how big of a dent we can make, without even really trying.
When I was there with the scientists, we talked about this human dent, but we also talked a lot about geology. About how mundane, ever-churning forces like plate tectonics, weather and gravity, when applied over long enough time scales, can cause colossal changes to landscapes and rocks.
The thing you realize, when you’re sitting on a boat in the Colorado, surrounded by the spectacular products of those changes, is that geologic processes might be slow, but they’re constantly at work. At any point in time, the world we see is somewhere in between being created and being destroyed. It is seldom static, which is why, if there are things we cherish about the present, it’s on us to preserve them — maybe not against geological forces, but at least against smaller-scale agents of destruction.
The Grand Canyon as we know it is pretty young by geologic standards, only about six million years old. That means we humans happen to be here on this planet at exactly the right time to experience it: after nature’s forces have had enough time to form it, but before those same forces have had too much time to grind it all down to nothing. Once, eons ago, there might have been grander canyons. Eons from now, there will probably be even more wondrous ones. This one is ours.
You can read my full article from the canyon here.
Essential news from The Times
An unfrozen Arctic: A new study found that the Arctic may experience its first summer with practically no sea ice as early as the 2030s. That’s a decade sooner than previously thought.
A new era at the World Bank: Ajay Banga assumed leadership of the bank on Friday. He’ll have to juggle the institution’s ambitions to combat climate change and fight poverty.
Another insurer quits California: Allstate has stopped selling new policies in the state, following a similar move by State Farm. The company cited worsening climate conditions.
Speaking of insurance: The industry is responding to disasters by raising rates, reducing coverage and exiting some markets. Here is how to optimize your coverage.
A “forever chemicals” settlement: Three major companies said they would pay $1.18 billion to settle the first of many claims that they and others have polluted water across the country.
Hvaldimir the “spy” whale: A beluga whale who was once labeled a Russian spy could be in trouble. The problem? He likes people.
A new assault on D-Day beaches: Climate change is speeding coastal erosion at the historic sites where the Allies landed in June 1944.
From the Opinion section
A solution that’s actually a problem: America is racing to produce more biofuels. But they take up a lot of land to displace very little fossil fuel, Michael Grunwald writes.
Before you go: What’s happening to this flashy falcon?
Birds of prey are generally seen as a conservation bright spot. Take bald eagles, whose population in the contiguous United States has quadrupled since 2009. Or red-tailed hawks, which sometimes nest in city buildings, dining on mice and rats. But there’s at least one puzzling exception: American kestrels, while still fairly common, have declined sharply since the 1970s. Scientists are working to find the reason, and a solution.
Manuela Andreoni, Claire O’Neill, Chris Plourde and Douglas Alteen contributed to Climate Forward.
