Question about environment Student Name Develop a genuine question about your park involving the environment. 2-3 paragraphs about your question and the answer to the question. Please include detailed information that the rest of the class could learn from Form is on my website Text and photo required Due: Friday April 7th

Where does the Great Sand Dunes water go? Example Student As in our own bodies, water is the glue that holds the Great Sand Dunes complex system together, through flowing streams, wetlands, and moisture that allows unique plants and animals to survive in the sand. The impressive dunes and the incredible diversity of life in and around them depend on these life-giving waters for survival. These streams and wetlands are not simply beautiful features of a national park. They are critical parts of a huge natural system that shapes and maintains the Great Sand Dunes as we know them today. When you walk on shallow Medano Creek at the base of the dunes, you are walking on water that extends deep below the surface. The dunes sit on top of an aquifer that extends up to a mile below the valley floor. Streams flow on top of the high water table, and most wetlands here are actually the visible top of the aquifer, where it fills in the lowest depressions in the dunes and valley floor. Recharged each year by stream runoff and sat from the mountains, the aquifer is two–layered, with an unconfined upper layer and a deeper layer largely confined by seams of blue clay. Instead of flowing into rivers that eventually reach the ocean, streams flow on the valley surface, then sink down through the sandy soil, primarily into the unconfined aquifer. Because of these "disappearing" streams, and long underground faults around the aquifer, water in the northern half of the San Luis Valley is trapped into a closed basin. The dunes rise at the eastern edge of the basin, at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This dramatic setting is the foundation of the massive dunes and their hydrological system, from mountain peaks to verdant wetlands. Water flows from the San Luis Valley into the Rio Grande starting in Colorado. The water flows down stream and down in elevation through New Mexico into the Texas / Mexico border where it eventually flows into the Gulf of Mexico . The Rio Grande River heads up in the eastern San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado and flows nearly 2000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. It is the second longest river in the U.S. and for 2/3 of its length it forms the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico.