Research News

Krishna Khatri is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow with iUTAH working with Courtenay Strong in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah. Krishna received his PhD in Water Resources Engineering (in the area of risk and uncertainty analysis) from Delft Technical University, Netherlands; MSc in Integrated Urban Water Engineering from UNESCO-IHE, Netherlands; MPA in development study and BE in Civil Engineering from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He has more than 10 years of experience working with governmental organizations, consultancies, and higher education institutions in Nepal, UK, Netherlands, and USA. Prior to coming to the University of Utah, he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of South Florida. He was also an Honorary Research Associate (Sept 2007 to April 2011) in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham, UK. His main areas of expertise and interests include developing sustainable water resources and urban infrastructure system; risk and uncertainty analysis; and application of soft computing techniques for system modeling; and decision making under risk and uncertainty.

Krishna’s key role in iUTAH RFA-3 will be developing innovative frameworks, new methodology, and system models for application in Utah. The main objective is to analyze the important interactions and interdependences within and among natural, built, and social systems, in order to enhance the resilience and sustainability of water resources and water infrastructure in Utah.

Melissa is interested in how cities grow in the desert. She explores this question by examining how the climatological, hydrological and socio-political contexts in which we live shape how we are able to manage water resources. She employs a variety of social science methods depending on the project including: surveys, interviews, stakeholder focus groups, scenario planning, mental mapping and visual sociology. Pursuing her research goals requires the ability and willingness to transcend disciplines, which is why Melissa seeks out opportunities to work with engineers, geographers, atmospheric scientists, and others. To that end she has pursued degrees in Sociology (DePaul University, BA/MA), Urban Planning (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MS) and Ecology (Colorado State University, PhD). She is excited to use her experience to innovate interdisciplinary research pursuits with iUTAH affiliates and work with community decision-makers to plan for environmental and social sustainability in the Wasatch Front.

Erik comes to iUTAH from the University of California - Berkeley, where he studied how carbon, oxygen, and uranium isotopes in soils respond to climate for his PhD research. Part of this research was centered on how water behaves in soils, and that is his main focus here in Utah. Erik is using isotope-enabled soil water hydrology to better understand water in soils along the Wasatch Front, and how soil water contributes to streamflow and atmospheric water vapor.

iUTAH researchers and students conducted our second synoptic sampling event of the summer Aug. 17-19, this time focusing on the Logan River. Working under the direction of iUTAH environmental engineer Dr. Bethany Neilson and her doctoral student Michelle Barnes, scientists from Utah State University, Brigham Young University, and the University of Utah took a hydrometric “snapshot” of the river to learn more about how the river is connected to groundwater and the adjacent air and land surface.

Find out how the citizens of Utah feel about issues such as water shortages, water quality, air pollution, population growth and more by using our survey data viewer. 

These data were collected by teams of students who randomly intercepted adults shopping at grocery stores across major population centers in Utah between September 2014 and June 2015. People were asked about their perceptions of water supply and water quality conditions in their community and levels of concern about 10 key issues. The survey also included information about their familiarity with spending on water, responsibility for watering lawns, water-based recreation activities, and basic demographic characteristics (including the zipcode of where they live). 

For more information about methodology and copies of the full dataset,  please contact Dr. Douglas Jackson-Smith.