INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH GROUPS FROM INVESTIGATING RARE EARTH ELEMENT RESOURCES IN ABANDONED COAL MINES TO MEASURING GRAVIT Y AND AMBIENT SEISMIC NOISE DYNAMICS IN THE FARMINGTON BAY PL AYA , DEPARTMENT RESEARCHERS HAVE ENLISTED TEAM MEMBERS THAT EXTEND FAR BEYOND THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY & GEOPHYSICS.
Others include faculty and students from different departments in the College of Science as well as those from state and national geological surveys and even the Assistant VP at the U for Faculty Equity and Diversity. The stories these research groups are telling are ones of impactful collaboration as they work together across disciplines on critical issues, such as saving the Great Salt Lake and better predicting water sources for the arid Mountain and Southwest.
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GROUNDWATER AND SU STA INING THE G R EAT SALT L AKE
ANALY Z ING SE DIME NT IN T H E GRE AT SALT L A K E
Kip Solomon, Paul Brooks, Tonie VanDam, Mike
Gabriel Bowen and Deming Yang
Thorne, Fan-Chi Lin, and Bill Johnson
This research duo is analyzing This group, assisted by students, is
geochemical and sedimentological
installing piezometers (which measure
records from Great Salt Lake sediment
pore pressures in the ground),
cores to reconstruct lake-level and
analyzing environmental tracers,
salinity variation over the Holocene.
measuring gravity and ambient
These records document both natural
seismic noise dynamics, and collecting
and early human influences on the
resistivity profiles. These assessments
lake and provide context for recent
and measurements are occurring
and ongoing changes. <
at locations ranging from the high Wasatch to the Farmington Bay playa for the purpose of understanding what portion of water reaching Great Salt Lake becomes groundwater during its transit from snowpack downward. The results will elucidate the role of groundwater in sustaining wetland habitat on the lake’s eastern shore and the lake itself. <
The confluence of critical funding, cumulative decades of research experience, and the enthusiasm and new blood of student geologists and geophysicists provide a gallery of remarkable work by equally remarkable people shown here. <
RESEARCH | 2023
