Recent satellite imagery of the area shows that a significant portion of the territory previously drained from the Kakhovka Reservoir is now covered with water. The explanation for this phenomenon could be quite simple — the spring snowmelt has brought additional moisture to the lower Dnieper region.

"We are clearly observing a rise in water levels, which corresponds to the spring flood situation on the river floodplain," explains Grigoriy Kolomytsev, an expert from the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group and a junior research fellow at the I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. "In the absence of artificial water level regulation, we can witness on the territory of the former Kakhovka Reservoir the same processes that occur in natural, unregulated by humans, river floodplains. Spring floods have been occurring in these lands thousands of years before the construction of the hydroelectric power stations," Kolomytsev added.