Initial core data of 2018 sediment cores from Lake Powell, Utah

The Lake Powell Coring Project was a USGS research effort, in cooperation with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and U.S. National Park Service. In the fall of 2018, hydraulic piston cores targeted sediment that had been deposited in Lake Powell. This large reservoir on the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona was created after the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963. Retrieval and analysis of cores was undertaken in response to the Gold King mine release from the Bonita Peak Mining District in Colorado on August 5, 2015. This event resulted in the containment loss of three-million gallons of mine-impacted waters which flowed from the Animas River into the San Juan River, and ultimately into [...]