Natural Resources of the West: Water
GEOL/ENVS 394

Fall 2010

Mon 6 Dec – Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River

Jon Waterman, National Geographic Freshwater Hero

In the spring of 2008, Jonathan Waterman, a National Geographic Society grantee, Sonoran Institute Fellow, and an award-winning author, began a journey by foot and boat down the iconic mother of all western American rivers, the Colorado. Standing at over 10,000 feet in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, he emptied his mother’s ashes into the headwaters and began a journey by foot and boat down the river, all the way to its last trickle in the Sonoran desert and down the parched Mexican delta to the Pacific Ocean. It would be the first time anyone had ever traveled from these headwaters 1,450-miles to  Gulf of California and it would be a compelling, complicated, and hugely informative journey.

As part of his Colorado River Project, Waterman has undertaken a lecture campaign throughout the west to educate the public about the river’s challenges in times of climate change and population growth. He also chronicles his experience and the river in his new narrative book, Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River, a photo book, The Colorado River: Flowing through Conflict, and a National Geographic Colorado River Basin Wall Map.  The Colorado, sometimes called the American Nile, supplies water for 30 million people and more than 3 million farm acres, across 7 western states and northern Mexico. But the demands made on the river have put its very future at stake. The river has not reached the sea for many years. It is the lifeblood of the American West, and as its waters dip to an all-time low, the economy, wildlife, people, and very landscape of this vast region are in jeopardy.

Mr. Waterman’s books will be available for purchase following his presentation.

For more information about Mr. Waterman's adventure please see http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater-hero-jonathan-waterman/