Great Salt Lake Collaborative

Utah Public Radio (UPR)

April 1st 2025 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

“The Utah Water Research Lab is one of the few academic or institution based water research labs in the United States and that really drew me to come to the Utah Water research lab.” That was USU Ci...

 

 

February 26th 2025 by Caroline Long / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Over the past 40 years, Great Salt Lake has shrunk dramatically. As water levels drop, more of the lakebed is exposed. “There's a lot more dried lakebed sediments that are prone to re-suspension dur...

 

 

February 14th 2025 by Max McDermott / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

In 2022, Great Salt Lake reached its lowest water volume in over 170 years of recorded history. The lake’s volume depends on three key variables: annual river flow into the lake, precipitation onto th...

 

 

January 19th 2025 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The Great Salt Lake Strike Team released their 2024 report this week, featuring data on Great Salt Lake just in time for the 2025 Utah legislative. The team brings together academic and state research...

 

 

January 8th 2025 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

A new study published Tuesday zooms in on just how much farmers in the Great Salt Lake basin need to cut back on livestock-feed crops, and suggests how to make it easier for everyone. The scientific...

 

 

December 10th 2024 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The USU Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air recently released their annual report to the governor and legislature. The 2024 report is the fourth one released by the institute that...

 

 

September 19th 2024 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Fly fishing is Emmett Heath's heaven and the Green River is his god. Heath got hooked on angling as a young teen while fishing with his father in Utah. It became more than a past-time or a sport and...

 

 

September 19th 2024 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Over 40 million people in seven states in the southwestern U.S. rely on the Colorado River. It provides water for crops that feed the entire country. A management plan helps govern how the water is us...

 

 

September 12th 2024 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah researchers are working to restore Green River tributaries with a host of strategies including reintroducing beavers and removing invasive plants. There have been significant changes to ecosyst...

 

 

August 26th 2024 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Water conservation efforts across the state have increased over recent years. We visited a business, a farm, and a water district, all utilizing strategies that will save water and benefit Great Salt...

 

 

August 21st 2024 by Erin Lewis and Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

There is a group of women who have come together each year for decades to raft western rivers. Zan Merrill is one of those women. “Rivers are so enchanting. They're so all encompassing. When you're fl...

 

 

July 1st 2024 by Emily Calhoun / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

I recently drove through the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge Auto Route Tour alongside Sheri Quinn and Colleen Meidt. Come along with us as we weave around the wetlands of Great Salt Lake with prime...

 

 

June 28th 2024 by Katie White / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah lawmakers are asking for ideas about managing the Great Salt Lake. UPR’s Katie White attended the first ever Great Salt Lake Road Show where Utah farmers voiced concern about proposed water conse...

 

 

May 28th 2024 by Emily Calhoun / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Jaimi Butler started her career as the only woman on a brine shrimp harvesting rig on Great Salt Lake. Butler has since made a name for herself as a Great Salt Lake scientist, an advocate, writer, and...

 

 

May 13th 2024 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

In its first year, the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake, comprised of about 15 high school and college age students, has accomplished a lot. They are working with organizations and lake stakeholder...

 

 

May 10th 2024 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The Colorado River, considered the lifeblood of the southwest, is so depleted that it no longer reaches the ocean. It supplies water to more than 40 million people, including two million residents alo...

 

 

April 2nd 2024 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The Friends of Merrill-Crazier Library hosted David Parrott, associate professor of biology at Westminster University and assistant director of Great Salt Lake Institute, as their spring 2024 speaker...

 

 

March 4th 2024 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

UPR hosted an event on Tuesday with Bridgerland Audubon Society and Grow the Flow called “Is Great Salt Lake a Person?” The event brought 90 community members to Cache Bar in Logan. A screening of a...

 

 

November 16th 2023 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah program pays farmers to fallow crops and it’s saving a little bit of water for the Colorado River. Whether it should be a solution for Great Salt Lake is still a thorny issue with ripple effects...

 

 

November 16th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

“We were born in water. We were delivered in water. We know what water is. Water sustained us from conception, and water sustains us as we go throughout life.” Goshute chair Virgil Johnson shared the...

 

 

November 10th 2023 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah is spending more than $200 million to get agriculture to switch to water saving technologies. But is the saved water getting to the Great Salt Lake? Listen to the UPR story here. 

 

 

November 10th 2023 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah program helps farmers grow crops with less water. Is it helping the Great Salt Lake? Listen to the UPR story here. 

 

 

September 20th 2023 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Parts of Cache Valley are surrounded by mountains with geologic layers that have dissolved enough to create sinkholes, caves and springs among other porous geologic features. This is generally referre...

 

 

September 7th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The Salt Lake City Council convened Tuesday to discuss a development plan for the 1500 acre Northpoint neighborhood at the southeastern tip of Great Salt Lake. The neighborhood, which currently has no...

 

 

July 21st 2023 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Aimee Van Tatenhove is a science reporter at UPR, who has largely focused on Great Salt Lake issues. However she has even greater ties to the lake ecosystem as a PhD student in the Wildland Resources...

 

 

July 6th 2023 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah is home to a number of water bodies that serve as endpoints or stopover sites for migratory shorebirds on their long seasonal journeys. Three decades ago, biologists conducted shorebird surveys...

 

 

July 5th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

A new mural at the Eccles Wildlife Education Center in Farmington Bay is connecting people across the Americas through migratory birds. The mural, which depicts plants and animals found around Great...

 

 

June 29th 2023 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Salt Lake City's utility service is rolling out a water management analysis and planning software — otherwise known as waterMAPS — to residents. It can be used to track water use, and is a useful tool...

 

 

June 15th 2023 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah Growing Water Smart is a program that hosts workshops put on by four major organizations: the Utah Division of Water Resources, Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, Western Resource Advocate...

 

 

May 31st 2023 by Heather May / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Brian Steed has a big job ahead of him, if the Utah Legislature confirms his new role as Great Salt Commissioner. If so, his official work overseeing the rescue of Great Salt Lake could start as early...

 

 

May 11th 2023 by Erin Lewis / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Ecoflights is an Aspen, Colorado based nonprofit that provides a big picture perspective on changing landscapes across the West. They take scientists, activists, legislators, community members and pre...

 

 

May 11th 2023 by Tom Williams / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Fox 13 reporter Ben Winslow recently traveled to Israel with a delegation of Utah leaders. He wrote this for the Great Salt Lake Collaborative: “One of the driest countries in the world, Israel once s...

 

 

April 20th 2023 by Anna Johnson / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The wetlands of Great Salt Lake host 12 million birds — over 300 different species — every year as they migrate along the Pacific Flyway. “It’s kind of like a gas station on a road trip for birds,”...

 

 

April 20th 2023 by Max McDermott / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

On Friday, USU’s landscape architecture seniors are presenting their capstone projects under the theme of “All Hands on Deck,” an effort aimed at saving the Great Salt Lake. The students have formulat...

 

 

April 11th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The Great Salt Lake Collaborative has created an interactive website to help Utahns understand the critical role Great Salt Lake and its wetlands play in the ecosystem that is crucial to 10 million bi...

 

 

March 9th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Laguna Mar Chiquita is a large saline lake in central Argentina. Much like Great Salt Lake, Mar Chiquita hosts millions of migratory birds each year, and has faced fluctuating water levels, pollution...

 

 

January 27th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Over 150 years ago, the United States Army attacked and killed as many as 500 Shoshone men, women and children in Northern Cache Valley. The attack resulted in one of the largest slaughters of Native...

 

 

January 8th 2023 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Wilson’s phalaropes are small, salt-loving shorebirds that migrate thousands of miles between distant saline lakes in South America, and those in our own backyard, like Great Salt Lake. New research s...

 

 

November 8th 2022 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Removing all high-water-use plants is not the panacea in times of rising temperatures and droughts across the southwest, according to a new study. Deadly flooding of the Indus River in Pakistan bac...

 

 

November 2nd 2022 by Max McDermott / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Union Pacific’s Great Salt Lake Causeway is a 20-mile railroad crossing that physically separates the lake into North and South arms. The only opening in the causeway is a 160 ft wide gap called the W...

 

 

September 26th 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

This month’s Utah Clean Air Caucus meeting focused on Great Salt Lake, and the role it plays in Utah’s air quality. Craig Miller, the manager at the Utah Division of Water Resources, gave an update...

 

 

September 26th 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

New research suggests that as Great Salt Lake shrinks and gets saltier, brine shrimp, a staple food for migrating birds and a boon to Utah’s economy, may be in danger of dramatic population declines...

 

 

August 10th 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

An environmental nonprofit is offering Utahns a new perspective on the challenges facing Great Salt Lake, by giving them a bird's eye view of its shrinking shoreline, as dry conditions and human water...

 

 

August 9th 2022 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

The Great Salt Lake Hydro Mapper is a user-friendly webpage with information about what’s happening with Great Salt Lake in real-time, like the water and salinity levels and most importantly, what’s h...

 

 

August 3rd 2022 by Sheri Quinn / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Matt Yost is a Utah State University professor in Plants, Soils & Climate and USU Extension specialist. He knows farming first-hand. He grew up on a dairy farm in Burley Idaho. “My father still oper...

 

 

July 27th 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Utah Governor Spencer Cox released the third chapter of Utah’s Coordinated Action Plan for Water on Wednesday, which aims to balance water conservation, agriculture and state growth. The Action Plan...

 

 

February 22nd 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Drought and water diversions have been draining Great Salt Lake for decades, generating concern about the waterbody and its impacts on humans and wildlife. This past weekend, a group gathered at Antel...

 

 

February 1st 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

Brine shrimp are an abundant crustacean in Great Salt Lake, providing a critical source of food for migratory birds, and brine shrimp eggs are sold across the world as feed for aquaculture facilities,...

 

 

February 1st 2022 by Aimee Van Tatenhove / Utah Public Radio (UPR)

A group of Utahns are looking to get brine shrimp named as Utah’s state crustacean. The idea started with a student at Westminster College, but an aspiring sixth grade class in Salt Lake City is doing...

 

 

 

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A Solutions Journalism Project
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