From high in the hills around Las Vegas, tourist Choune Osterero gazes down at the line of chalky mineral deposits left on the rocks around Lake Mead as the level of America's largest reservoir has dropped over the last quarter of a century of drought.

As of August 5, the reservoir stood at 1,040.74 feet above sea level, just 0.16 feet (1.9 inches) above its record low of 1,040.58 feet, which was set in July 2022.

Lake Mead is inches away from dropping to a new record low as poor snowpack, years of overuse, a lack of cooperation among the seven basin states that use the Colorado River and even evaporation continue to drain the reservoir.

A LiveScience study says probably not. On the water side of the equation, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Earth has about 1.4 billion gigatons of water, including that in oceans, ice caps, glaciers, lakes, rivers, groundwater and vapor.

Energy Fuels mines uranium-laden limestone found in the area around Red Butte in a process known as breccia pipe mining. David Kramer, a hydrogeologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, explained the process to a crowd of attendees at the summit.

UNLV appears several times on U.S. News & World’s Report’s new Best Global Universities rankings.

UNLV Professor Emeritus of Geology Steve Rowland recently authored a scientific paper about an intriguing, earthquake-caused geological structure — known as a clastic pipe — which was identified by avid hiker and geology enthusiast Jeffrey Cuneo near Lake Mead. The paper was published in May in the scientific journal Geology of the Intermountain West.

As water molecules move around the planet through the water cycle, they take on many forms, moving from solid to liquid to gas and back again. They can make up snowpacks melting in the spring, a river rushing to the ocean, clouds carried on sea breezes, and even pee flushed down the toilet.

Amid the worst regional drought the Western U.S. has seen in 1,200 years, and in a year when Rocky Mountain snowpack levels also hit record lows, the Colorado River system is now barely over one-third of its total hydrological capacity, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The owner of a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon wants state regulators to allow a higher level of arsenic in groundwater under the facility. Two scientists, however, object to the proposal, arguing regulators shouldn’t approve it until a more robust investigation into the elevated arsenic levels takes place. Energy Fuels Resources, the owner of the Pinyon Plain Mine, says its investigation was thorough and that operators aren’t at fault.

Flecks of minerals captured in diamonds show hidden connections between Earth’s surface and its deep interior

Not all colorless gemstones are created equal. When it comes to the comparison of white sapphire vs diamond, white sapphires are often touted as an alternative to natural diamonds. In reality, they are distinctly different stones with different origins.