LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
The Colorado River drought has been so bad for so long that places that were underwater for decades are now out on dry land and starting to grow plants again. Scientists researching those plants are finding thriving native ecosystems. Alex Hager from member station KUNC reports.
ALEX HAGER, BYLINE: When you see a research paper, you see data and conclusions. What you don't see is this - the messy process of science in action.
SETH ARENS: I guess as an ecologist, I can't quite bring myself to just hack down vegetation.
HAGER: In a narrow, red rock canyon in Utah, Seth Arens is gently pushing his way through towering dense grasses, charting a path to his research site along the muddy canyon floor.
ARENS: Oh, quick sand, quick sand.
HAGER: What's the best way around?
ARENS: You can go through it but just quickly.
HAGER: Arens is an environmental scientist, and getting to his research site requires about a mile of arduous tracking through the kind of desert heat that leaves you dizzy. It's in the triple digits under the Southern Utah sun, but eventually the counting can begin.
ARENS: Twelve, one Baccharis salicifolia, one...
HAGER: Arens is producing the first ever serious data on what plants are living here, tens of thousands of acres that are seeing the light of day after spending decades submerged under Lake Powell. In the mountains of silt left behind by the reservoir, it's mostly native plants taking root, the same kind that were last here in the 1970s before the area was flooded.
ARENS: And now not only is it not under the lake, but it turns out nature's doing a pretty good job by itself of coming back and establishing thriving ecosystems.
HAGER: But it's unclear whether these new thriving native plant communities might be drowned if Lake Powell's water level rises again. Its future is at a crossroads as river managers debate new rules that will dictate how much water it should hold. The reservoir is unlikely to ever fill up completely again. Sara Dant says that means now is a great time to study what the future might hold.
SARA DANT: One of the things that is kind of astonishing about natural environments, almost regardless of where you are, is how quickly they can recover if they are able to.
HAGER: Dant is a retired professor who studies the history of politics in the environment.
DANT: We have to be careful of our hubris in, you know, and I'm using air quotes here, managing nature because you can cooperate with nature, but nature finds way.
HAGER: Zak Podmore, a journalist and the author of a book on Lake Powell's future, says nature is doing what humans couldn't - bringing back native plants in an area threatened by invasive species.
ZAK PODMORE: That's exactly what's happened in Glen Canyon over the last couple of decades, but it's happened completely on its own.
HAGER: And even though humans have spent millions on native plant programs around the region, we didn't need to intervene here.
PODMORE: The Native species have been outcompeting the invasives in a really impressive way.
HAGER: Podmore says in a way, our struggles to manage a drying river are revealing an unexpected positive outcome of climate change.
PODMORE: Those trends usually go in one direction - right? - the slow degradation of land. But what's happening in Glen Canyon is an ecological rebirth.
HAGER: The next rules for managing the Colorado River are due in 2026, and they're expected to help write the next chapter for Lake Powell and the things that live in it. For NPR News, I'm Alex Hager in Glen Canyon.
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