USU members of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team
To Utahns, the Great Salt Lake is more than just a salty body of water. It is a habitat for wildlife, a defense against toxic dust exposure and a key contributor to the state’s “Greatest Snow on Earth.”
When the lake shrank in 2022 to its lowest-ever recorded level of 4,188.5 feet, a group of researchers, state agencies and experts from across Utah came together to do something about it. That effort became the Great Salt Lake Strike Team.
“The strike team was actually one of the first that was formally built to address some of the data issues surrounding how we can know where we’re at and what types of research or projects could be helpful during this time of crisis,” said Anna McEntire, managing director of the Utah State University Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air and one of the team’s original organizers.
Essence Barnes Anna McEntire, managing director of the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air and member of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team poses for a photo on Feb. 24 at the USU Agricultural Sciences Building.
The team was created to serve as a trusted, primary source for data about the Great Salt Lake to help policymakers improve watershed management and increase water levels.
“What we see is people from the state to grassroots advocates to other researchers really leaning on the work that the strike team does, as this is the agreed-upon data,” McEntire said. “So, when we’re talking about what really is the elevation of Great Salt Lake, we’re using the same numbers. When we’re talking about how much water agriculture uses, we’re using the same numbers.”
The team is made up of researchers from USU and the University of Utah, as well as state agencies like the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture and Food and Department of Environmental Quality.
“The idea behind [the team] is bringing together researchers from different departments … different methodologies, different areas of expertise,” McEntire said. “We’re not just, you know, the ivory tower … [we’re] really closing that gap between implementation and data.”
Team member Sarah Null, a USU professor of watershed sciences, researches the impact of climate change on water inflows to the lake, water storage strategies and functional flow requirements.
Essence Barnes Sarah Null, professor of watershed sciences and member of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team poses for a photo on Feb. 25 at the USU Biology And Natural Resources Building.
“I work a lot in environmental water management, and so I tend to focus on how we can enhance or sustain ecosystems but still think about those human water uses,” Null said. “My students and I are working on how much water will get to Great Salt Lake with climate change … taking our current demands … and saying, ‘With future climate changes, how much water do we think we’ll get to the lake given all these other water rights and water uses?’”
Null said one of the goals of the team is to get water to the lake and keep it there by filling in legal holes and informational gaps.
“For example, [in] some of our recent work, we realized that all of the measurements in rivers were upstream, and as we get closer to the Great Salt Lake, we don’t really have very many measurements, and we don’t understand where water is going,” Null said. “Then other agencies, like USGS [United States Geological Survey] and all of Utah State agencies could come in and start to say, ‘Okay, here are places where we should add more measurements.’”
David Tarboton, a USU professor of water resources engineering, brings expertise in hydrology, hydrologic modeling and terrain analysis to the team.
Essence Barnes David Tarboton, professor of civil and environmental engineering and member of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team poses for a photo on Feb. 27 at the USU College of Engineering building.
“My role has become the person who says what will happen with lake levels depending on how much the inflows are. Initially, we started out with the questions, like, ‘How much water would it take to get the lake back to healthy levels?’” Tarboton said. “That sort of provides a target for the efforts of conservation to get that additional water.”
Tarboton emphasized using creative solutions rooted in data to help sustain the lake’s health, and his recent research has looked at impounding Farmington Bay and assessing water from the Newfoundland Basin.
“The state as a whole needs to recognize that it needs to be in for the long haul in terms of solutions for the lake, and maybe the strike team needs to mature into that sort of mode too,” Tarboton said. “We need to think about immediate information but also longer-term knowledge, data systems and monitoring systems so we actually know that if this action is taken, it results in this much water getting to the lake.”
McEntire said her role on the strike team is as the unofficial organizer and manager. She is also the editor and shaper of the annual strike team data and insights summary.
“The strike team report is kind of long in the sense of pages, but for the amount of content that we actually discuss and put together, we do a lot to keep it just to the high-level items and what are the critical things that people need to know,” McEntire said. “My other piece is putting together a census, as well as understanding the way people have engaged on policy.”
While the team has seen mindset and policy changes being made to support the health of the lake, they recognize that a consistent effort must continue to be made.
“Change is hard, you know, and we need change from everybody who uses water, which is all Utahns, to really think about how we can use a little less,” Null said. “Not only that, but how can we take the water that’s been conserved and really make sure it gets dedicated to Great Salt Lake?”
The trio highlights the importance of the multi-agency, multi-university partnership and how critical every part of the team is in supporting the creation of this data.
“We all want to see the Great Salt Lake saved, and we recognize that there are lots of trade-offs that come with making a decision to save Great Salt Lake,” McEntire said. “Hopefully, we can save Great Salt Lake while saving agriculture and recreation, water use and economic vitality and have the most wins with the fewest trade-offs.”
As lake levels continue to fluctuate, the strike team’s work underscores one simple truth: Saving the Great Salt Lake will require not only better data but state-wide volition.