In order to conduct maintenance on the concrete apron downstream of the dam, engineers will be limiting the water that runs through the dam’s turbines starting Monday and continuing through the rest of the week.

And that has provided northern Arizona scientists with a unique opportunity said Scott Vanderkooi, chief of the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center at USGS.

Most days, between 8,000 and 15,000 cubic feet of water per second flows through the dam, depending on the demand for electricity across the southwest. But on Monday that will drop to just 4,000 cubic feet of water per second. Then, after the five days is over, the dam will release more water than normal, about 20,000 cubic feet of water per second.

“This is a flow we haven't seen in a couple of decades, and it might be an opportunity for learning,” Vanderkooi said.

The last time a disturbance flow such as this occurred in springtime was back in 2008, Vanderkooi said.

The low flows might give scientists a view into the river’s ecosystem closer to its state before the construction of the dam in the middle of the last century, and potentially disrupt non-native species living in the Colorado River to the benefit of native ones, Vanderkooi said.

Data gathered during the disturbance flow could then be used to make future recommendations on how to better support the Colorado River ecosystem, according to a Department of the Interior media release.

Since the construction of the dam, the amount water flowing through the river has varied very little. That’s different from how the river flowed historically as it would shrink or swell with runoff and the seasons.

“Before the dam, typically at the end of the fall and over the winter, flows would get really low, and then you'd have a big flush of water in late spring. And so we're not not at quite the scale of what we used to have but we're trying to kind of mimic that that same kind of thing,” Vanderkooi said.

The lower water level next week may be noticeable to the untrained eye, especially in the wider parts of the river closer to Lees Ferry, Vanderkooi said.

But more importantly, Vanderkooi said scientists are hoping to see how the lower waters might impact the plants and animals that call the river home.

“Often in ecosystems disruption can actually lead to positive effects. So what we're hoping is this is gonna disrupt some of the aquatic vegetation and maybe some of the invertebrates that aren't as desirable there and make room for algae species and insect species that are that are beneficial to the to the ecosystem,” Vanderkooi said.

And it's not only invertebrates that might be impacted. Many of those species make up the food base for native fish in the Colorado, such as the endangered humpback chub and razorback sucker.

If the lower water levels are better for native bugs, such as midges and caddisflies, and reduce the number of other invasive invertebrates, that could be good for native fish, Vanderkooi said.

"Some of the snails we have in the system are actually non-natives and one of the hopes is this will knock those back and allow more native species to become more prevalent,” Vanderkooi said. “They're really poor sources of food. Fish can eat them and they'll actually go all the way through their digestive tracts unharmed.”

The disturbance may also diminish the prevalence of the invasive brown trout, a species that has long plagued the river’s native fish.

Vanderkooi said past experiments have shown that a springtime disturbance flow such as the one that is planned can reduce the survival rates for young brown trout.

Lastly, Vanderkooi said they are also working with the Hualapai tribe to look at how the flows impact sandbars farther downriver in western Grand Canyon.

“[The Hualapai tribe] have their river operations down there and there's been some concern about some of the boats getting beached down there, because a lot of sediment actually ends up creating some navigation hazards for them. So we're we're going to be monitoring down there to see what happens to the channel of the river,” Vanderkooi said.