| Abstract
Most contentious water issues in the Bear River Basin are rooted in complex human land use
behaviors. For example, the growing demands for water by new residential and recreational
users have placed increasing pressure on traditional irrigated agricultural operations in the
watershed. Similarly, changes within traditional land use categories can have dramatic impacts
on water quality and water quantity throughout this region. These include apparent shifts from
intensive irrigated cropland into less intensive irrigated pasture or unirrigated crop or
conservation reserve program land uses, increases or decreases in animal stocking rates on public
and private rangeland, and concentration of dairy and hog livestock numbers on larger
operations.
As researchers at Utah State University initiate multidisciplinary studies in the Bear River basin, it is
imperative to have accurate and detailed information about the underlying demographic and land
use changes taking place. In coming years, these changes can be spatially referenced to
documented changes in hydrologic flows and water quality in the basin. The goal of this project is to
develop a scientifically valid database that can be used to analyze regional and local
demographic and land use trends that have important implications for water resources in the
proposed Bear River Laboratory Watershed. This database will serve as the foundation for a
socioeconomic profile report describing recent changes and current conditions. It will also
generate future research questions regarding links between socioeconomic trends and water
supply and quality issues in the basin. Ideally, these questions will be addressed with natural
science colleagues in multidisciplinary grant proposals developed next year.
This research will begin with a careful inventory of existing databases regarding human activities in the watershed. We will then develop new aggregate datasets to document county-level and basin-wide changes in the structure and performance of the agricultural sector, overall patterns of land cover, and the size and composition of population and housing stock. Geospatially-explicit data will also be collected regarding the location and type of: a) existing housing and new residential construction activities; b) key agricultural and recreational infrastructure; and c) key agricultural and rural land cover changes that reflect spatial shifts in the underlying human behaviors.
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