Spatially Understanding Utah’s Water Resources as a Foundation for Aquatic Restoration

Successful restoration of the arid West requires a basic knowledge of available water resources, withdrawals, and management. Utah, being the second driest state in the country, is continuing their efforts to restore impaired water systems and improve on water scarcity problems. Because of a fast-growing population, the diversity of Utah’s landscape and regulations that govern water throughout the state, understanding the region’s water hydrologic condition can be difficult. A majority of this information is stored in databases, represented by only numbers and statistics. In an effort to better conceptualize this data and increase the spatial understanding of Utah’s water, a set of maps have been produced. These maps were created using ESRI’s ArcMap and include major lakes and rivers, average annual precipitation, average annual streamflow, total urban withdrawals, total agricultural withdrawals and management. Observing the resulting information from multiple maps at once can lead to spatial inferences and additional questions regarding aquatic restoration throughout the state. These maps can help identify areas that require current and future restoration in Utah