Utah State University
Utah State University is a university that is part of the pulse of the water sector. Here we bring together everything it publishes on Smart Water Magazine: its news, its blogs and the events it takes part in.
New collaborative research generates lessons for more adaptive lake management
"Sometimes the crazy ideas lead to watershed improvements." That was a key takeaway from research conducted by Utah State University, published in the American Society of Civil Engineer's Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. Using Google Sheets during video calls, 26 Colorado River Basin managers and experts took on water user roles to discuss consuming, banking and […]
Bridging the gap: Computer scientists develop model to enhance water data from satellites
Satellites encircling the Earth collect a bounty of water data about our planet, yet distilling usable information from these sources about our oceans, lakes, rivers and streams can be a challenge. "Water managers need accurate data for water resource management tasks, including lake coastal zone monitoring, rising seas border shift detection and erosion monitoring," says […]
Snow algae: Investigating how algal blooms impact mountain snowpack
Scott Hotaling, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Watershed Sciences in the Quinney College of Natural Resources, is exploring how the watermelon-tinted blooms of snow algae impact mountain snowpack—where they come from, what triggers a bloom, and what factors influence the size, scale and magnitude of snow algal blooms. Intensely brilliant and starkly white, […]
How does a drying Great Salt Lake affect carbon cycling?
As water levels at the lake continue to decline, the complex natural systems the lake supports are shifting, too. Ecohydrologist Erin Rivers from the Quinney College of Natural Resources is investigating how shifting water levels at the Great Salt Lake are altering the way it captures and stores carbon. The lakebed sprawls across 1,700 square […]
Research: Great Salt Lake on path to hyper-salinity, mirroring Iranian lake
Starved for freshwater, the Great Salt Lake is getting saltier. The lake is losing sources of freshwater input to agriculture, urban growth and drought, and the drawdown is causing salt concentrations to spike beyond even the tolerance of brine shrimp and brine flies, according to Wayne Wurtsbaugh from Watershed Sciences in the Quinney College of […]
Understanding how high-latitude lakes respond to and affect climate change
To arrive at Nunavut, turn left at the Dakotas and head north. You can’t miss it—the vast tundra territory covers almost a million square miles of northern Canada. Relatively few people call this lake-scattered landscape home, but the region plays a crucial role in understanding global climate change. New research from Soren Brothers, assistant professor Utah […]
Irreversible hotter and drier climate over inner East Asia
Mongolia's semi-arid plateau may soon become as barren as parts of the American Southwest due to a "vicious cycle" of heatwaves—that exacerbates soil drying, and ultimately produces more heatwaves—according to an international group of climate scientists. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers warn that heatwaves and concurrent droughts have increased significantly during the past two […]
How climatic change impacts on river erosion
Scientists have long debated the idea that global climate changes have forced river erosion rates to increase over the past five million years. New field data gleaned from a multi-institution, collaborative study of North America’s rugged Yukon River Basin, near storied Klondike goldfields, reveal profound increases in river erosion during abrupt global intensification of climate […]
More than 1,000 tons of plastic rains into western U.S. protected lands annually
Janice Brahney's study examined the source and life history of both wet (rain) and dry microplastic deposition. Cities and population centers were found to serve as the initial source of plastics associated with wet deposition, but secondary sources included the redistribution of microplastics re-entrained from soils or surface waters. Utah State University Assistant Professor Janice Brahney and […]