Research News
December 21, 2015
University of Utah and iUTAH researcher Paul Brooks was recently featured in the news. Mountain pine beetle populations have exploded over the past decade due to warmer temperatures and drier summers, and these insects have infected and killed thousands of acres of western pine forests. Researchers have predicted that as trees died, streamflow would increase because fewer trees would take up water through their roots.
A recent study by University of Utah geology and geophysics professor Paul Brooks and his colleagues in Arizona, Colorado and Idaho, found that if too many trees die, compensatory processes kick in and may actually reduce water availability. When large areas of trees die, the forest floor becomes sunnier, warmer and windier, which causes winter snow and summer rain to evaporate rather than slowly recharging groundwater.
Researchers ski past dying trees. Credit: Provided by Paul Brooks
December 7, 2015
Study Documents Utahns' Perceptions of Water Situation
Utah State Today featured an article on the household survey by a consortium of Utah universities provides extensive scientific data on current residential water management and public support for a range of water policies.
With experts predicting rapid population growth and changes in weather patterns, the perceptions and behaviors of Utah residents will be a critical driver of water resource conditions and quality of life in the state. A survey of households by a consortium of Utah universities provides extensive scientific data on current residential water management and public support for a range of water policies.
Researchers from Utah State University and the University of Utah came together as a team under the iUTAH program, a $20 million interdisciplinary research effort funded by the National Science Foundation to study and protect the state’s water sustainability. More than 2,300 households were surveyed in Cache, Salt Lake and Wasatch counties in the summer of 2014. The survey collected detailed information about how local residents in distinctive neighborhoods use and think about water in their daily lives….
November 17, 2015
iUTAH Researchers Release Findings in Ecosphere
In a recent paper published in Ecosphere, a journal of the Ecological Society of America, iUTAH researchers have examined how waterways in human-impacted ecosystems receive nitrogen from numerous point and diffuse sources that contribute to eutrophication and alter the composition and function of riparian and aquatic communities. The article, published on October 28, 2015, builds on earlier studies, which suggest that fertilizer, atmospheric deposition, animal waste, waste water effluent, and septic systems typically represent important nitrogen sources in urban, urbanizing, and agricultural watersheds. Authors of the article include Steven J. Hall, Rebecca L. Hale, Michelle A. Baker, David R. Bowling, and James R. Ehleringer.
The article can be viewed in its entirety under the title Riparian plant isotopes reflect anthropogenic nitrogen perturbations: robust patterns across land use gradients.
October 20, 2015
Nibley's water future: City discusses how new well will impact water conservation
Check out the Herald Journal's follow-up article on iUTAH researcher Dr. Doug Jackson-Smith's presentation of the 2014 iUTAH household survey on Utah’s water future findings to the Nibley City Council.
October 8, 2015
iUTAH Post-doctoral Spotlight: Dr. Rachel Gabor, RFA1/2
Rachel started out as an analytical chemist with a focus on nanofabrication and nanoparticles (Harvey Mudd College, BS, University of Minnesota, MS). She then spent several months doing Hurricane Katrina recovery in New Orleans and saw first hand how human alterations to the landscape impact our water systems and the ecosystem services they provide. Inspired to study watersheds, she went to the University of Colorado Boulder (MS, Water Resources Engineering, PhD, Environmental Studies) where she worked with the Boulder Creek CZO studying organic matter in soils and streams.
Rachel is excited about the interdisciplinary nature of the iUTAH project, and particularly the chance to study watersheds in an urban system. In the six months she’s been with iUTAH, she participated in several sampling campaigns along Red Butte Creek and the Logan River with a focus on how to use biogeochemical tracers to understand the connections between the landscape and the stream.
