Bonneville Salt Flats
National Science Foundation: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Biophysical Feedbacks in the Changing Bonneville Salt Flats
Description:
Bonneville Salt Flats (BSF) is a vast and dynamic perennial salt pan in northwest Utah that is changing rapidly. The system not only responds to variations in rain, wind, evaporation, and groundwater flux, but also to a century of land-speed racing, potash mining, and recreation. The system is now changing in ways that are limiting these historic uses, and managers are responding with mitigation efforts to try to maintain multiple uses. Land managers and stakeholders are actively making decision about what to do to try to preserve this environment, primarily for the legacy of land speed racing, while still maintaining opportunities for natural resource extraction and ecosystem function. However, without a clear and quantified understanding of the processes governing the biophysical system and the complex connections between the social fabric and biophysical processes, mitigation efforts may not have the desired outcomes.
Objectives:
This project aims to transform our understanding of both the social and natural systems that are intertwined at BSF to enable data-driven decision-making and effective relationships among those interconnected by this unique place. The research examines the BSF system in a holistic cross-sector study to identify the linkages between management decisions, stakeholder perception and use, and the natural biophysical and hydrological system. The project investigators are using an interdisciplinary approach to explore and quantify both the biophysical and human drivers for observed and ongoing changes in the BSF system. Humans and the environment are clearly one interconnected system at BSF, yet the forces between the connections are not understood.
The focuses of this study include:
A) dynamics of the natural system
B) dynamics of the human system
C) processes through which the natural system affects the human system
D) processes through which the human system affects the natural system
The focuses of this study include:
A) dynamics of the natural system
B) dynamics of the human system
C) processes through which the natural system affects the human system
D) processes through which the human system affects the natural system
Management:
Through this study, the team is developing an unprecedented understanding of the forces between the biophysical and social connections.
This project is quantifying the rates and characteristics of biophysical and hydrological change and evaluate the feedbacks between the biophysical changes and the stakeholder communities. The research team is evaluating how mitigation, management, and coalition efforts attempting to focus changes towards a particular state are impacting the natural system, and is exploring how changes in the biophysical system are driving stakeholder groups to adapt to the changing environment. BSF provides a unique platform for providing broadly transferable insights into the complex dynamics and unexplored feedbacks between coupled social-ecological systems in an actively changing and highly valued environment.
This project is quantifying the rates and characteristics of biophysical and hydrological change and evaluate the feedbacks between the biophysical changes and the stakeholder communities. The research team is evaluating how mitigation, management, and coalition efforts attempting to focus changes towards a particular state are impacting the natural system, and is exploring how changes in the biophysical system are driving stakeholder groups to adapt to the changing environment. BSF provides a unique platform for providing broadly transferable insights into the complex dynamics and unexplored feedbacks between coupled social-ecological systems in an actively changing and highly valued environment.
Collaborators:
- National Science Foundation
- University of Utah
- John Hopkins University
- Bureau of Land Management