Date of Award:

8-2026

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Environment and Society

Committee Chair(s)

Christopher Lant

Committee

Christopher Lant

Committee

Sarah Null

Committee

Richard Rushforth

Abstract

Global demand for water is outrunning supply, and how we account for water is part of the problem. Many water management frameworks are based solely on how much physical water moves through rivers, aquifers, and other water bodies, missing the water that is embedded in food and other products a region produces and exports. This study developed a new, generalizable water accounting framework that incorporates this “hidden water,” known as virtual water, into water management and applied the framework in the Great Salt Lake Basin.

The Great Salt Lake is shrinking, and an often-overlooked driver of the lake’s decline is how much agricultural water is embedded into the alfalfa and grass hay produced in the region. Using the new, integrated framework, we found that over half of the water depleted from the basin from 2010 to 2019 left the region as virtual water, rather than serving local communities or ecosystems. Further, during the same 2010 to 2019 period, the Great Salt Lake Basin was a net virtual water exporter of 320 million cubic meters per year, equivalent to roughly 9% of annual streamflow to Great Salt Lake. Modeled lake restoration scenarios suggest that shifting agricultural trade patterns and targeted water conservation are the most promising pathway to lake recovery.

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