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See How Far Water Levels in Lake Mead Have Fallen
In 2000, Lake Mead was full of deep, midnight-blue water that flooded the banks of the rivers that fed it. But 20 years later, it has shrunken drastically. And its basins are lighter, too, almost teal in places, a sign of increasingly shallow waters connected by extraordinarily skinny canyons.
In new images from this month, the lake is encircled now by a puckered shoreline and a white shadow, the so-called bathtub ring, remnants of salts and minerals left behind on the canyon walls by receding water.