Water Resource Engineer
Utah Division of Water Resources
Bio:
Jake is a water resource engineer with 10 years of professional hydrologic and hydraulic modeling experience. At the Utah Division of Water Resources he is always looking for opportunities to pair his expertise with citizen involvement to create lasting and adaptable solutions to his civilization's water resource challenges. He lives in Salt Lake City and enjoys adventuring about on his bicycle through the city (please don't hit him) and around Great Salt Lake.
Title: Getting to know the invisible sweaty giant of GSL
Abstract: As an endorheic lake, outflow from Great Salt Lake occurs solely from evaporation. As the lake ecosystem consists of distinct zones—such as the highly saline north arm, south arm, wetlands and playa; evaporation across the lake is not uniform. Quantifying evaporative fluxes from these distinct portions of the lake is essential to determine inflow requirements, maintain target lake elevations and inform water management strategies throughout the lake ecosystem and larger drainage basin. Techniques have been used in the past to estimate total evaporation but they all had limited spatial or temporal coverage. The estimates ranged between 2.0 and 5.3 million acre-feet annually, which can be equal to or more than total water consumed by human activities. Given the importance of this phenomenon, the Utah Department of Natural Resources has partnered with the United States Geological Survey to improve measurements and modeling of evaporation from GSL. Danyal Aziz (DNR) will present the overarching monitoring network and pilot program. Paul Inkebrandt (DNR) will describe physical and technical challenges to collecting data and Scott Hynek (USGS) will discuss evaporation intricacies and techniques for modeling. A public discussion on this critical component of the basin water balance will lead to shared understanding of challenges we face.
