Water Resource Engineer

Division of Water Resources

Bio:

Leila Ahmadi is a water resource engineer for the Hydrology and Modeling Section of the Division of Water Resources. Her work with the Great Salt Lake Integrated Water Model (GSLIM) is what brings her to the Issues Forum. She is modifying and enhancing GSLIM in order to answer important questions regarding lake management options as well as what the future may hold for Utah.

Leila has worked on projects involving the state’s water budget, agricultural economics, and water demand programs. She has prior experience as an adjunct professor and has worked on flood hydrology, sediment transport, water reuse, water quality analysis and environmental issues. She received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Utah State University with a dissertation on management of treated wastewater reuse. Her master and bachelor degrees were both obtained at Shiraz University focused on civil and agricultural engineering. In her spare time, she loves to paint, travel, and enhance her cooking skills.

Title: Modeling of Great Salt Lake’s Salt Balance

Abstract: GSLIM, created using GoldSim, is designed to answer questions regarding how changes within the Great Salt Lake basin would affect Great Salt Lake volume and salinity. Since the model was calibrated from 1987 to 2012, the Division of Water Resources has been working on validating and improving the model after the East Bridge was opened (Dec 2016). The challenges and process of this work as well as, the future improvements that the Division is considering for the GSLIM model will be discussed.

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