Abstract

The Great Salt Lake in Utah, United States is one of many saline lakes worldwide that is currently in decline. The shrinkage and collapse of global saline lakes is primarily caused by irrigated agriculture and other human consumptive uses, with secondary contributions from global climate change. Great Salt Lake's area has decreased by more than 50% relative to its long-term natural level. The decline of these lakes triggers serious and long-lasting socioeconomic consequences, including destruction of habitat, degradation of air quality, and damage to the economy. The Utah state government has instituted a variety of programs to conserve water to stabilize and restore Great Salt Lake, including improvements to agricultural water use efficiency, monitoring of municipal water consumption, the creation of a watershed trust to lease and purchase water for the lake, a pilot water market, and regulation of mineral extraction industries. Because these programs are new, important information about their effectiveness is not currently known, including critical parameters such as the amount of water saved, the amount delivered to the lake, and the cost and timeline for these water savings. Rapid and robust assessments of the status and efficacy of these programs is needed to adapt and expand lake restoration efforts. In this context, we performed an expert assessment to generate plausible estimates of these parameters. While expert assessment does not deliver definitive answers, it can measure uncertainty and integrate subjective knowledge that is often discarded. This subjective information about current and potential performance is particularly relevant to policymaking. The results of the expert assessment indicated significant uncertainty about the amount of water saved and delivered to Great Salt Lake. However, even with such high uncertainty, the responses indicated that current water conservation and augmentation efforts have delivered less than 4% of the water needed to restore the lake to a healthy level by 2034. Qualitative recommendations from experts focused on three major topics. First, there is an acute need to enhance measurement of water conservation and delivery. Second, state and federal regulatory interventions are needed to mandate water conservation in addition to market approaches to increase water flow to the lake. Third, existing policies and programs need to be modified to include an explicit mechanism for saved water to be delivered to Great Salt Lake. We discuss these findings and propose specific approaches to adjust the water programs to make them most effective and mitigate current limitations.

Degree

College and Department

Life Sciences; Plant and Wildlife Sciences

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