Christine Rumsey

The Great Salt Lake (GSL) is an indispensable economic and ecological resource. It provides critical habitat and food for millions of migratory birds, and generates nearly $200 million per year from recreational activities and the brine shrimp harvest industry (Bioeconomics, 2012). These uses, habitat and aquaculture, rely on a balanced supply of nutrients in the Great Salt Lake to support...

The western part of the conterminous United States is often thought of as being a desert without any large bodies of water. In the desert area of western Utah, however, lies Great Salt Lake, which in 1986, at its highest level, covered approximately 2,300 square miles and contained 30 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is the amount of water necessary to cover 1 acre of land with water 1...

Studies of Sources and Transport of Dissolved Solids (Salt) in the Colorado River Basin using the Spatially Referenced Regressions on Watershed Attributes (SPARROW) Model The Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) encompasses about 112,000 mi2 and discharges more than 6 million tons of dissolved solids (salt) annually to the lower Colorado River Basin. It has been estimated that between 32 and 45...

The Colorado River has been identified as the most overallocated river in the world. Considering predicted future imbalances between water supply and demand and the growing recognition that base flow (a proxy for groundwater discharge to streams) is critical for sustaining flow in streams and rivers, there is a need to develop methods to better quantify present-day base flow across large regions...

The completion of the Railroad Causeway in 1959 divided the Great Salt Lake in half. Because all of the freshwater inflows enter the southern part of the lake, the north arm became much more saline than the south; well defined in the satellite images. Several years of greater than normal precipitation resulted in a large increase in the lake’s area during the early 1980's and the creation of a new...