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The Colorado River (Spanish: Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The 1,450-mile-long (2,330 km) river, the 5th longest in the United States, drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states.
The Algodones Dunes. The Colorado Desert is a subregion of the larger Sonoran Desert, [1] covering about 7 million acres (2.8 million ha; 28,000 km 2). [2] The desert occupies Imperial County, parts of San Diego and Riverside counties, and a small part of San Bernardino County in California, United States, [3] as well as the northern part of Mexicali Municipality in Baja California, Mexico.
Below Imperial Dam the remnants of the Colorado river lessen in gradient and in its lower course flows through the Colorado Desert in a broad sedimentary plain upriver from Yuma, Arizona, where it is joined by the Gila River. The Gila was once one of the Colorado's largest tributaries, draining a huge swath of Arizona and western New Mexico.
Like other desert river deltas, such as the Nile Delta and the Indus River Delta, the Colorado River delta has been greatly altered by human activity. Decades of dam construction and water diversions in the United States and Mexico have reduced the delta to a remnant system of small wetlands and brackish mudflats. [ 6 ]
The Lower Colorado River Valley has unique plant communities because it is the most arid part of the desert and it has the highest temperatures, in excess of 120 °F (49 °C) during the summer. The low humidity means that most plants must have mechanisms that deal with severe water loss through evaporation.
The Deserts of the Lower Colorado River Valley geographic area and Lower Colorado River section — are within the Southwestern United States and Northwest Mexico. The valley region runs from Hoover Dam , south to the Colorado River Delta at the Gulf of California ,.
The dam and lake are major components in the Colorado River Storage Project's attempt to regulate the flow of the Colorado River. The Colorado River Storage Project is a United States Bureau of Reclamation project designed to oversee the development of the upper basin of the Colorado River. The project provides hydroelectric power, flood ...
The western route parallelling the Colorado River, covers more plains, of the Colorado Desert/Mojave Desert, rising to, and down from various mountain passes, (for example south of Needles, California (the Sacramento Mountains (California)), or Searchlight, Nevada). Only washes drain from the west into the Colorado River.