Great Salt Lake BasinHydrologic Observatory

Contact InformationDavid Tarboton

Utah State University4110 Old Main Hill

Logan, UT 84322-4110david.tarboton@usu.edu

(435) 797-3172

William P. JohnsonUniversity of Utah

135 South 1460 East Rm 719Salt Lake City, Utah

(801) 581-5033wjohnson@mines.utah.edu

A principal goal of CUAHSI is the development of the observational and data systems infrastructurenecessary to acquire knowledge sufficient to address large scale hydrologic science problems. The globalscale and complexity of hydrologic processes requires an open and integrated community effort. TheGreat Salt Lake Basin Hydrologic Observatory development team is highly committed to this concept ofopenness. It is our hope that researchers from across the United States will involve themselves and evenlead aspects of the proposed observatory. Please contact us if you would like to become part of the GreatSalt Lake Basin Hydrologic Observatory Team or for more information regarding the Proposed Great SaltLake Basin Hydrologic Observatory.

Weather and Climate Monitoring Streamflow and Water Quality Monitoring Ground Water Monitoring

Poster Created By:

Environmental Management Research GroupUtah Water Research Laboratory

8200 Old Main HillLogan, UT 84322-8200jeff.horsburgh@usu.edu

(435) 797-2946

Jeffery S. Horsburgh

A well-instrumented flux tower will be installedin a high-elevation subalpine forest tocontinuously monitor 1) precipitation input, 2)evaporation and plant transpiration losses asmoisture fluxes, and 3) surface energy balance.The flux tower measurements provide totalmoisture fluxes, which are composed oftranspiration by forests and plants, evaporationby soils, and sublimation of snowpack inwinter.

A deep multilevelgroundwatersampling wellextending to a depthgreater than 1000 ftwill be located eastof the Great SaltLake in order tocapture the fullrange ofgroundwaterresidence times forwater emanatingfrom the mountainblock associatedwith the WeberRiver Basin.

Real time data for water quality parameters instream locations ranging from alpine catchmentto the desert basin will allow determination ofrates of water quality evolution across thehydrologic system during precipitation andsnowmelt events. Twenty real-time waterquality sensors (pH, conductance, dissolvedoxygen, temperature, and turbidity) will becoupled with streamflow gages extending fromthe wetlands surrounding the Great Salt Lake toalpine catchment at the headwaters of the WeberRiver Basin. The system will be installed andmaintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, whowill also provide a 40% funding match to theproposed water quality sensor system.

Great Salt Lake Basin Hydrologic Observatory

The following critical infrastructure will be placed within the Weber River Basin to initiatethe hydrologic observatory.

Precipitation, Evapotranspiration, and Infiltration

Water Quality Related Parameters

Mountain BlockGroundwaterRecharge to

the Basin

Vertical profiles oftemperature andsalinity in the GreatSalt Lake will bedeveloped in order toclose the energybudget, and thisfunction will beprovided by a buoy orpermanent platform onthe Great Salt Lake to

(From Cook and Bohlke, 2000)

A tunable diode laser (TDL) absorption spectrometer will beused for measurement of stable oxygen isotope content ofatmospheric water vapor to allow separation of thecomponents of moisture flux.

Upgrades to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)snowpack monitoring sites (SNOTEL) will be made in orderto provide soil moisture (snowmelt infiltration), solarradiation, soil temperature, relative humidity, windspeed anddirection data.

Analytical capability for trace metals species concentrations in complex matrices (e.g. hypersalinewater and wetlands sediment) will be developed to facilitate examination of sources and sinks oftrace metals contaminants in the Great Salt Lake Basin. A facility with technical support will beestablished utilizing high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) interfaced to an inductivelycoupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometer (MS) with an octopole reaction system (to eliminateinterference from matrix by-products). This facility will be dedicated to the hydrologic observatory.

Spread-Spectrum Communications Network

A point-to-multipoint Ethernet communication network usingspread-spectrum wireless technology will be developed andpatterned after the NSF-sponsored High Performance WirelessResearch and Education Network at the University ofCalifornia, San Diego, and will build on existing partnershipswith federal (National Weather Service and Federal AviationAdministration) and state (Natural Resources and Air Quality)agencies. Hydrologic information collected from existing andsoon-to-be-deployed sensors will be made available directly toresearchers and classrooms.

be deployed in cooperation with the NOAANational Buoy Data Center. Instrumentation onthe buoy or platform will also include airtemperature, relative humidity, pressure, incomingsolar radiation, near-surface and subsurface (2 mintervals) lake temperature and salinity, windspeed and direction and gust, and wave height andsurface currents.

Bottom Boundary Great Salt Lake

Nowhere in the United States is the societal importance of water more evident than in thearid west, where rapid population growth and limited water resources converge to reachnear-crisis level during periods of drought.

http://greatsaltlake.utah.edu

Overarching Questions

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How do climate variability and human-inducedlandscape changes affect hydrologic processes, waterquality and availability, and aquatic ecosystems over arange of scales?What are the resource, social and economicconsequences of these changes?

A Hydrologic Observatory to measure thehydrology of the Modern West focused on

the interactions between humaninfluences and hydrologic processes.

Forcing, Feedbacks, and Coupling

How does the aggregate water balance reflect theintegrated effect of nonlinear dynamicinteractions among runoff, vegetation, mountainblock groundwater, urbanization, and water use?

Scaling

To what extent do the Great Salt Lake and surrounding salt playasaffect the temporal and spatial variability of precipitationthroughout the basin relative to the role played by larger-scaleatmospheric moisture fluxes into the basin?

Science Themes

The terminal Great Salt Lake presents a unique opportunity toclose the water, solute, and sediment balances that is rarelypossible in a watershed of a size sufficient for the study of landsurface-atmosphere interactions.

The steep topographic, climatic, and land-usegradients in the Great Salt Lake Basinprovide a compactness that is unparalleledand more proximal to logistical support thanany other comparable location in the U.S.

Hydrologic Influence on Ecosystem Function

How are aquatic species and resources related to climate,topography, and geology, and how will these systems respondto changes in the magnitude and timing of seasonal hydrologicprocesses?

Transport of Chemical and Biological Contaminants

What is the trajectory of selenium, dioxin, and othercontaminant concentrations in wetlands surrounding the GreatSalt Lake? What are the dominant biogeochemical processes(e.g. chemical reduction and sequestration in sediment,methylation and volatilization) that govern the concentrationsof contaminants in the system?

Predictions and Limits toPredictions

How can historical records (e.g., treerings, contaminant accumulation inGSL sediments, GSL water levels,etc.) be used to better quantify andunderstand natural and humaninduced changes in the hydrologiccycle in order to predict responses tochanges and plan for and adapt touncertainties in water resources?

Hydrologic Extremes

How can we better understand extremeevents, both floods and droughts, in asystem driven by potentially changingexternal climate forcing and internaldynamics?

Sustainability of Water Resources

How do hydrologic fluxes, flow paths, andresidence times change in response todevelopment that is prevalent in much of thewestern U.S.

Source: Waddell et al. (2004)

Great Salt Lake Basin58,000 km2

Weber Basin6,400 km2

Deseret RanchPaired Watersheds

20 km2

FrostCanyon9 km2

Bear Canyon11 km2

Linking Hydrologic andBiogeochemical Cycles

What are the effects of snowmelt pulse onthe balance among hyporheicbiogeochemical processes? What effectsdo lake-volume fluctuations (e.g. cyclicsaturation and exposure of lake bedsediments) have on biogeochemicalsequestration and release processes?How do land-use driven changes in themagnitude and timing of seasonalhydrologic processes alter thesebalances?

The Great Salt Lake acts as a collectorand integrator of hydrologic signalsfrom the surrounding basin providingthe opportunity to investigatefundamental hydrologic processes atscales that have been previouslyunexplored. Lake sediments in closedbasin lakes extend our knowledge ofhydrologic processes and water qualitytrends well beyond the historic record.