The Great Salt Lake - Wetland Edge

The Environmental Planning program at Utah State University  requires studio courses be taken by each of its graduate students. Studio courses are typically five credit hours and immerse students in a single--real world-- problem for the entire semester. The first semester of my graduate program I took the Bioregional Analysis and Planning studio course, we were tasked with 'saving' the Great Salt Lake from the perspectives offered by the institute for Land, Water and Air at USU. The class was divided into three teams each taking one element and assigned on stakeholder. The Great Salt Lake Advisory Council for Air, the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District for Water, and The Nature Conservancy for Land. I worked with 3 other students on the Nature Conservancy Team. 

Each team was tasked with investigating issues specific to their stakeholder, framing up a problem and methodology to solve it, and presenting the information in a Ted style presentation to the stakeholder as well as delivering a hardcopy deliverable for their future reference. As my group learned about Great Salt Lake (GSL) ecology, the global significance of wetlands there, and rising tensions between development and conservation efforts by The Nature Conservancy at the Shorelands Preserve we chose to focus on the Wetland Edge. Focused on consciously developing the agricultural area currently shielding the Wetland Edge and building a culture of stewardship that invites community members to engage with the wetlands while protecting them. You can read more about our immersive dive into edge ecology and dynamic work here, as well as reading about the noteworthy work done by other teams. We also produced a more digestible brochure detailing wetland ecology and its global significance. 

Working on this project I was able to apply my GIS knowledge to create maps for all groups but focused on images for our team. I learned how to delegate work, problem solve, and represent a stakeholder effectively while still producing work that felt valuable and true to the course. The work done by graduate students during this course went on to inform the LAEP Charette experience in January, and several undergraduate capstone projects. If you have questions or are interested in watching a zoom recording of our presentation, please contact me!