Who reads about Utah's water future?


On Tuesday, students at Utah State University organized the first “Community Conversation on Climate Change” to facilitate a discussion about some of the key points from The Fourth National Climate Assessment – and what those impacts mean for Utah.

Graduate students at USU specializing in Climate Adaptation Sciences, an interdisciplinary program designed to tackle climate adaptation with a diverse curriculum, held this event to improve circulation of the report to the public.

Like climate change, the sheer magnitude and complexity of the full report can be daunting, but chapters and regions of the assessment are made available in a more succinct web format to promote readership for a more diverse audience.

“It [the assessment] is clear and the topical structure lets people get quick info on subject areas they care about,” said Lisa Green, the project coordinator of the Climate Adaptation Sciences program.

The assessment is broken up into regions and key messages that allow the user to navigate through impacts that are likely to impact them personally.

With a single click, a reader from Utah could see that the assessment clearly outlined water as the primary concern for the region’s future. The key message highlighted increasing intensity and persistence of drought, deteriorating infrastructure and groundwater depletion as significant threats to our water resources in a region with a rapidly growing population.

However, Green said the report could be improved for general readership and result in real action and litigation towards climate change adaptation.

“It’s hard to connect with only summaries of impacts,” Green said. “I think it could be improved by including more narratives, stories or qualitative findings.”

Will Munger, a Ph.D candidate in environment and society at USU, echoed Green and called for better science communication surrounding Utah’s water resources.

“There’s definitely a lot of decisions being made in Utah at an individual, community and state level that really need this sort of science injected into it,” Munger said.

Munger referenced the development of fracking and oil sands as one example of unwise long-term decision making due to the water-intensive nature of these fossil fuel extraction methods.


“All those golf courses… all those green lawns with Kentucky bluegrass in one of the driest places around,” Munger said. “People here have a relationship with water because they see it up in the mountains… they understand where their water is coming from, but at the same time we [Utah] have the second highest per-capita use.”

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