Watershed Symposium 2024

This presentation will feature how engineers can help shape a more resilient future leveraging new perspectives and technologies.  Topics include watershed vulnerability assessments, innovative filtration media for stormwater quality treatment, aquifer storage and recovery, and how to leverage socio-economic census data in project prioritization.

Full Abstract:
Water scarcity, water quality impairments, aging infrastructure, a changing climate and the vulnerable populations that will experience all these challenges weigh heavily on the minds of environmental decision-makers these days.  It can be overwhelming to know where to start to help make our watersheds resilient. Fortunately, engineers and scientists have some powerful tools in their resiliency toolbox! This presentation will cover examples of how engineers can help shape a more resilient future,  covering how to leverage new information to help plan and prioritize, new technologies that create better resiliency opportunities, and some new ways of looking at old practices that still stand the test of time. The topics in this presentation will be a “sampler pack” of resiliency tools, including watershed vulnerability assessments for project prioritization, innovative filtration media for stormwater quality treatment, and aquifer storage and recovery.  In addition to providing project examples from Utah and elsewhere in the United States, this presentation will outline ways that today’s practitioners are using census data to incorporate socio-economic considerations into decisions about what to implement first, and where.

A recent survey across the Intermountain West found that the foremost challenge facing wetland managers was increasing temperatures and drought. Through a survey of wetland managers working in state and federal agencies, we identified how changes in temperature and precipitation are affecting the region's wetlands and how managers are responding to those changes. Participants will learn about the most common strategies employed and the predictions that wetland managers have for the future. The session will give participants a chance to share ideas about how the results might be used to inform future policies to improve wetland sustainability in one of the driest regions of North America.

The poster session is a forum for presenters to highlight programs and to share successful ideas with colleagues by presenting a research study, a practical problem-solving effort, an innovative program, and more.

Posters are listed alphabetically by title. ==> See Full Abstracts

Establishing a Functional Flows Framework for the Great Salt Lake Basin
Farah Nusrat, Utah State University
Functional flows are components of flow regimes that sustain river, wetland, and the Great Salt Lake (GSL) ecosystems, including hydrological, ecological, geomorphic, and biogeochemical processes. Natural resource managers can utilize this framework to design strategies for increasing resilience of GSL Basin waterbodies to climate change.

Great Salt Lake Playa Dust Suppression via Artificial Surface Crusting
Zachary Claerhout, University of Utah / Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Kevin Perry, Department of Atmospheric Sciences / University of Utah
Dust from the exposed portions of the Great Salt Lake (GSL) lakebed poses a potential health risk that may need to be mitigated if the lake level remains low. This study investigates the efficacy of artificial surface crusting via surface soil saturation as a potential dust suppression mechanism on the GSL playa.

Novel Rapid Lead and Copper Detection Method in Drinking Water
Nick Halverson, e-sens
This abstract presents new viable alternative lead and copper methods for reliable and portable testing applications that would allow much greater access for water and wastewater testers.

Rio Tinto Reduce Reclaim Remediate
Kiani Ellingson, Rio Tinto
Julie LeFevre, Rio Tinto
Rio Tinto Kennecott is committed to environmental water stewardship. From the metering and measuring of everyday water use, the preservation of the Inland Sea Shorebird Reserve, and our donation of water to the Great Salt Lake, these efforts benefit Utah, the community where we operate.

The Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine (SWSIE)  envisions a thriving future for the Southwest as a hub of green innovation, with industries and communities supported by clean water and renewable energy with STEM-enabled jobs and economic growth accessible to all.

Full Abstract:
University of Utah along with six core academic partners are part of a multi-institutional enterprise to confront the climate challenges facing the Southwest and spur economic development in the region. The Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine (SWSIE) addresses sustainability-driven innovations with an integrated, systems-level approach to equitably transform water security, renewable energy, and net carbon emissions and use of carbon directly captured from the atmosphere.

The mission is to transform the Southwest region into a national innovation hub, leading not only to positive climate impacts, but also to high wage jobs, economic growth, and technology-based startups and venture capital investments. The SWSIE Team envisions a thriving future for the Southwest as a hub of green innovation, with industries and communities supported by clean water and renewable energy with STEM-enabled jobs and economic growth accessible to all. To unleash this potential, SWSIE is building an ecosystem of researchers, innovators, educators, and decision-makers to harness STEM innovation and grow a workforce pipeline for the net zero economy.

This presentation will provide an overview of the innovation of SWSIE, with a focus on water. The presentation will discuss SWSIE strength in translation of research to commercialization and connecting academia with industry. This includes a roadmap for success, workforce development, and more. Further, the presentation will provide examples of projects and future initiatives. Core academic partners in SWSIE are University of Utah, Arizona State University, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Desert Research Institute, the Water Research Foundation, SciTech Institute and Maricopa Community Colleges.

Great Salt Lake is shrinking, yet cities along the Wasatch Front and in the lake's drainage basin continue to grow unabated. Both the lake and cities need water to prosper, setting up an existential crisis. Is it possible for the needs of the lake AND Utah's growing population to be met? The answer is YES, and this presentation will explore how.

Full Abstract:
In a world experiencing rapid population growth and limited water supplies, many cities have successfully eliminated the need to develop additional supplies as their population grows. This is known in academic circles as “decoupling” or breaking the traditional link between urban water demand and population growth. Successfully decoupling municipal and industrial (M&I) water demand from population growth has allowed these cities to continue to grow and prosper despite diminishing water availability and climate change stresses. In order for Utah to continue to grow and not cause further harm to the GSL and other aquatic ecosystems, Utah’s communities need to follow the proven decoupling model. This presentation will explore successful examples of decoupling in the Southwestern United States and assess how cities in Utah measure up and what needs to be done to ensure a bright future for all who rely on the state’s precious water resources.

How much water is Utah actually delivering to the imperiled Great Salt Lake? Are we heading toward a healthy Lake or costly mitigation? In this workshop, we explore a new report showcasing sobering findings exploring the consequences drying up the Great Salt Lake could have on Wasatch Front residents’ health and the state’s pocketbook.

Full Abstract:
If the Great Salt Lake is in peril, Utah is in peril. Great Salt Lake water levels are on a long-term decline – due to decades of upstream water diversions and climate change-driven aridification in the basin – exposing a vast expanse of dry lakebed that contains a number of toxic components. This creates a looming public health and economic crisis for residents of Northern Utah and the Wasatch Front. What are the financial and public health impacts to the millions of Utahns living adjacent to the Lake if we fail to deliver enough water to address current lakebed exposure issues and prevent continuing decline? In this session we will explore findings from a year of research that has culminated in a revelatory new report showcasing sobering findings concerning the consequences that drying up the Great Salt Lake could have on the health of Wasatch Front residents and the costly mitigation measures that could be required to suppress dust if Utah doesn’t succeed in raising Lake levels. We will present findings from what is, to our knowledge, the largest and most comprehensive review of the medical science of public health impacts from Great Salt Lake lakebed exposure. We will summarize what hundreds of papers show are the many and serious health implications associated with exposure to lakebed dust, discuss the possible presence of overlooked toxins in Great Salt Lake dust and their likely impact, and compare this emerging health emergency to that of other desiccated lakes around the world. In an analysis of efforts to deliver water to the Great Salt Lake, we will explore how effective Utah has been in meeting targets to deliver an additional 500,000 to 1 million acre feet of wet water each year to the Lake – the amounts needed to raise the Lake to a minimum healthy level and prevent catastrophic dust storms. Finally, we will examine whether we are headed toward a future of mitigation, like Owens Lake, and provide an updated and more detailed estimate of the costs associated with keeping dust from a desiccated Great Salt Lake on the ground.

Dust blowing from dry lakebeds annually darkens the snowpack of the Great Salt Lake Basin. The darkened snow absorbs more sunlight, resulting in earlier snowmelt. Here, we have used a combination of fieldwork, satellite observations, and modeling to quantify the impact of dust snowmelt, in hopes of improving water supply forecasts in the region.

Full Abstract:
Seasonal snow in the Great Salt Lake Basin (GSLB) provides critical water resources for human infrastructure and local ecosystems alike. The GSLB snowpack has a first order influence on water availability to 2.7 million Utahns and provides the main surface inflows to the Great Salt Lake. Snowmelt rates are primarily controlled by snow albedo, which is impacted by surface darkening from light absorbing particles (LAPs). In the Wasatch Mountains, the primary LAP constituent is dust originating from dry lakebeds across the eastern Great Basin. Dust accelerates snowmelt, adding uncertainty to streamflow forecasts. Despite this, the impact of dust on snowmelt timing is not well known in the GSLB and is not directly accounted for in operational models. Here we present three years of research targeted at quantifying the spatial and temporal distribution of dust on snow and its impacts on snowmelt rates and timing across the GSLB. Our work includes a time series of point-based field observations, analysis of 23 years of satellite remote sensing retrievals, and basin distributed process-based snowmelt modeling. Results reveal that dust impacts snowmelt annually, but with high variability year-to-year, and with no strong temporal trends in the last two decades. The annual impact of dust on snowmelt was quantified over two distinctly different water years (2022 and 2023) by running two model implementations with different albedo representations: 1) A standard time decay relationship representing clean snow albedo evolution, and 2) daily remotely sensed observed snow albedo from MODIS. Differences between model runs, evaluated by melt rates, surface water inputs, and snow depletion timing, reflect the influence of snow darkening on snowmelt across the basin. This approach has allowed us to parse out physical drivers of snowmelt and is the first study to quantify snowmelt acceleration due to dust over the GSLB.