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  Moab Futures: A Bioregional Planning Analysis

  Utah State University

  Since its inception, Utah State University's Bioregional Planning Program has conducted landscape-level planning studies across Utah, specifically addressing planning for the future. Rooted in Ian McHarg's seminal book, Design with Nature (1969), the Bioregional Planning Program investigates how biophysical systems influence settlement and culture, and, inversely, how settlement and culture shape biophysical systems.

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  Blacksmith Fork - Little Bear Watershed Alternative Futures Study

  Scott McComb, Emmet Pruss, Thomas Terry, and Conner White

  The following project was carried out in conjunction with the Logan River Task Force, under the chairmanship of Dr. Frank Howe. The Logan River Task Force was formed to develop an overall approach for managing the Logan River that balances ecology with people's social values for the river including public safety and property protection. Although the work of the Task Force has focused primarily on the Logan river, the Bioregional Planning graduate students have provided the Task Force with contextual information about the watershed, by exploring alternative futures for the Blacksmith Fork and Little Bear watersheds. This work expands on a previous bioregional planning study of the Logan, Blacksmith Fork and Little Bear watersheds that was carried out by bioregional planning students, Aubrey Christensen and Lyndi Perry in 2014-15.

  This report represents work that graduate students accomplished during two semesters (Fall 2015- Spring 2016) of the Master of Bioregional Planning (MsBRP) program at Utah State University. During the Fall semester, the MsBRP students collaborated with graduate students in the Landscape Architecture program to develop scenarios that addressed future growth in a portion of the study area, southern Cache Valley. Together they prepare and participate in a Geodesign workshop with community members, experts, faculty at USU. (For an overview of the workshop see the report: South Cache Valley Project- Planning with Geodesign, 2015.) The results of the workshop informed the landscape analysis, and ultimately the alternative futures that were developed for the Blacksmith Fork and Little Bear watersheds.