Utah Science Spring/Summer 2020

A Publication of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station at Utah State University Volume 72 Issue 1

Spring/Summer 2020

Noelle E. Cockett,

President, Utah State University

Kenneth L. White,

Director, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station and Vice President for USU Extension and Agriculture

Editor/Writer:

Lynnette Harris lynnette.harris@usu.edu

Writers:

Aubree Thomas, Dennis Hinkamp, Bronson Teichert, Traci Hillyard

Graphic Designer/ Illustrator:

Mike Wernert

UTAH SCIENCE is a publication

devoted primarily to Experiment Station research in agriculture and related areas. Published by the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322–4845.

To avoid overuse of technical terms, sometimes trade names of products or equipment are used. No endorsement of specific products or firms named is intended, nor is criticism implied of those not mentioned.

Articles and information appearing in UTAH SCIENCE become public property upon publication. They may be reprinted provided that no endorsement of a specific commercial product or firm is stated or implied in so doing. Please credit the authors, Utah State University, and UTAH

While scientists, communities, and individuals around the globe grapple with how we work and live in a world with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (coronavirus), big questions about agriculture and natural resources have not gone away. Asking and answering questions about the ecosystems and economies that sustain us requires accurate and timely data, so the work of Utah Agricultural Experiment Station researchers does not stop.

In Utah, many of the big questions about natural resource and land management involve public lands because they comprise about 75% of the state. That places Utah third behind Alaska (95.8%) and Nevada (87.7%) in a ranking by the percentage of land within each states’ boundaries that is owned and managed by the federal government.

It is an oversimplification to think that the challenges and opportunities of living with and managing public land are strictly Western U.S. issues, but the 12 states with the highest percentages of public land are all in the West. Faculty members and students at each state’s land-grant university and agricultural experiment station apply scientific rigor to examining challenges and opportunities in their state and region.

Researchers at Utah State University are at work on dozens of projects focused on different facets of managing public lands, some of which are highlighted in this issue of Utah Science. I invite you to learn more about the work they are doing to fulfill a portion of our responsibility to serve the people of Utah.

SCIENCE.

Ken White Director, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station

ON THE COVER

A view from beneath Moonshine Arch in Uintah County which is accessible off US Hwy 191 north of Vernal, UT. The arch is on Bureau of Land Management property, but getting there requires travel on a dirt road that crosses privately owned land. The drive and short hike reveal this beautiful geologic feature and the journey, like many in Utah, is an example of the state’s patchwork of public and private land. Photo courtesy of the Utah Office of Tourism.

Utah Science Volume 72 Issue 1

Spring/Summer 2020

Big Box Kilns Fight Fire with Fire.................................................................6 Biochar is the result of burning biomass such as trees and other plants at very high temperatures and the process could diminish fuels for wildfires while improving soils.

Plants and Pollinators Shape Unique Southern Utah Ecosystems...8 More species of bees live in Utah’s Grand Staircase region than there are total bee species living in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. Developing ways to better understand them may be key to managing ecosystems.

Balancing Agriculture and Nature in Utah’s Henry Mountains.......10 Elk, bison, and cattle are all at home in the Henry Mountains, but rangeland grazing is impacted by much smaller and plentiful animals.

Beavers Benefit Stream Management and Restoration..................12 Beavers are engineers that have an important impact on arid ecosystems as they change waterways and habitat for themselves and other creatures.

Assessing Vulnerability of Reservoirs to Post-wildfire Sedimentation in the Wasatch Front......................................................13 Wildfires shape western ecosystems long after the flames are extinguished. Loss of plants that once held soil in place leaves waterways choked with sediment that threaten already scarce water supplies in the West.

Unmanned Aerial Systems Monitor Mine Reclamation Success .....14 Mining reclamation work happens on the ground, but the best vantage point to monitor its success may be from the air.

Assessing Post-fire Reseeding Efforts in Box Elder County.............15 Following wildfires, non-native grasses move in and crowd out rangeland plants that feed wildlife and grazing animals. Selecting the right mix of plants for reseeding is crucial to ecosystem success.

Tons of Microplastic Rains into Western U.S. Protected Lands Annually...........................................................................16 Researchers went looking for minerals and organic matter among the dust particles dropped into national parks and wilderness areas. What they found everywhere were miniscule bits of plastic.

T

he federal government owns and manages land in

every state, but the 12 states with the most public land

within their borders are all in the West. A region so

vast and with such broad variations in geography, geology, climate, ecosystems, economies, and communities provides iconic landscapes and formidable challenges for residents and

management agencies.

Good policy and management need a foundation in good science. During its 2018 session, the Utah Legislature funded the Utah State University Public Lands Initiative to focus research on issues related to managing the land that comprises the majority of the state. The funds are managed by the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station and support an array of projects across several disciplines as faculty and student researchers seek to discover and understand ways to manage these import landscapes and resources. ¤

2 Utah Science

The Berryman Institute “…one thing is certain – for humans and wildlife to co-exist in a world where human population growth is increasingly encroaching into wildlife habitats, managers and stakeholders must be willing to engage in open and frank dialogue where human desires and the needs of wildlife are both considered.”

– Terry Messmer, Utah State University professor of wildland resources and director of The Berryman Institute

T

he Berryman Institute’s focus is

on reducing wildlife damage and resolving human/wildlife conflicts.

Among the institute’s activities is a feral and invasive species initiative support-

ed by the Utah Public Lands Initiative

and matching funds from several private

foundations and local governments. The effects of the more than 4,000 invasive

plant and animal species in the U.S. cost

society billions of dollars in terms of lost biological diversity (especially at-risk species), productivity, environmental integrity, and wildlife and human health.

In 2019, the Berryman Institute hosted

a summit to examine problems of wild and

feral horses and donkeys (free-roaming equids) with a goal of bringing together

representatives of various groups that are

impacted by the animals and determining

ways to balance animal and ecosystem needs. More than 90 delegates repre-

senting rangeland managers, sportsman

groups, wildlife managers, Native American

tribes, and academic institutions came together for the summit.

Equids are the only invasive species

with federal protection. Today, an estimated 150,000 free-roaming equids inhabit fed-

eral, state, tribal, and private lands. Given

projected annual growth rates of 15%, by

2035, this population could exceed 1 million animals. The number of wild horses and

burros inhabiting designated herd management areas in the western U.S. is already three times the allowable management

level, creating serious problems for animals and ecosystems. Participants discussed

present and pending ecological degrada-

tion caused by unmanaged, free-roaming

equids on federal, state, and tribal lands in

in policy gridlock regarding managing the animals and their habitat. They also agreed to the common goal of “healthy herds on healthy rangelands.”

One outcome of the gathering is

the Free-roaming Equid and Ecosystem

Sustainability Network (on the FreeNet group communication platform). The FreeNet group’s participants are working

to integrate sound science with local knowl-

edge and account for human perceptions and values as they share information that will help drive research and policy reforms. ¤

Learn more about the Berryman Institute’s research and outreach at:

berrymaninstitute.org

the West’s fragile, high-desert ecosystems with limited water resources.

Delegates came with different priorities

and backgrounds and agreed that polar-

ization of all interest groups has resulted

Contact Info:

Terry Messmer Terry.Messmer@usu.edu

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 3

Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism

I

nstitute of Outdoor Recreation and

Tourism researchers provide data,

information, and knowledge that

leads to a better understanding of how

to best provide outdoor recreation op-

portunities. As part of Utah State Uni-

versity Extension, they help communities reach every county in the state with local

experts and educators. The institute’s work brings together natural sciences and social sciences to help guide policy

and land-use decisions that encompass trade-offs and consequences of various

economic and resource management decisions.

Among the institute’s 2019 activities

was a series of workshops around the

state to examine challenges and opportu-

nities associated with different areas and increased outdoor recreation and tourism.

The five regional workshops included land

managers, city and county government employees and elected officials, and

people whose businesses depend on tourism and recreation. Discussions from

4 Utah Science

those meetings will guide decisions and help focus efforts in communities that are

gateways to Utah’s many recreation and tourist destinations.

The institute’s Gateway and Natural

Amenity Region Initiative (GNAR) aims to

assist small cities and towns near increas-

ingly popular places to visit and live to cope with some important “big city” issues. While

each town has its own special character

and challenges, many common elements present challenges, including traffic congestion, too little affordable housing for the

local workforce, and problems that come

without comprehensive development plans to prevent sprawl (usu.edu/gnar/). GNAR is a collaboration between USU and the

and tourism to determine which attractions drive the state’s tourism economy—more

than one million photographs posted on social media platforms.

The main attractions in some places

are well known: Temple Square in Salt Lake

County, Arches National Park in Grand County, for example. However, interest in other destinations in Utah’s 29 counties is

more difficult to quantify. Bringing together and analyzing the vast collection of social media photographs and location tags helps

clarify where tourists focus their attention.

The goal is to provide each county with an

accurate, data-based understanding of the specific places tourists frequent. ¤

University of Utah where researchers from

See some of the maps and data online at:

citizens preserve qualities that make a

utahsmostvisited.com

a variety of disciplines work to help local community or region unique while proac-

tively planning for growth and its positive and negative consequences.

The team’s Utah’s Most Visited Places

project uses a modern artifact of recreation

Contact Info:

Jordan Smith Jordan.Smith@usu.edu

Utah Forest Institute

T

he Utah Forest Institute is dedicated to im-

proving outcomes for fire and forest health in Utah. Institute researchers are examining

fire severity, fuel loading, and tree death in Utah, working in a complementary way with state and

federal organizations. To date, much of the fire re-

search in the U.S. has concentrated on forest types not abundant in Utah, and the Utah Forest Institute aims to fill some of these gaps.

Wildfires were once an important driver of eco-

system health in western U.S forests, but decades of

fire suppression, natural and human-caused disturbances, and environmental change have combined to create conditions that favor wildfires. In April 2020,

wildfires were already burning in Utah. Fire and land managers in southern Utah warned in early May that

winter and spring precipitation in the area had promoted the growth of grasses poised to fuel wildfires in the dry summer months. Fires that were once an

ecological benefit now impact human health and safety, air quality, and water quality.

The initial project of Utah Forest Institute re-

searchers is creating the Utah Fire Atlas, which will describe the severity and patterns of fires in all Utah forest types using Landsat satellite data. The goal is to

quantify at least 95% of the area burned since 1984 at a grid-scale of 100 ft x 100 ft, building on data from the

federal Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity program.

Using the fire atlas, researchers will characterize both wildfires and prescribed fires in Utah so the data can inform land management and policy decisions that

will create greater resilience to wildfires and optimize post-fire conditions. The institute is concentrating Learn more about the Utah Forest Institute at:

utahforestinstitute.org

Contact Info: James Lutz James.Lutz@usu.edu

on fires from 100 to 1,000 acres – a size relevant to

managers considering prescribed or “let burn” fires.

In the summer of 2020, the institute will have

researchers on the ground verifying satellite-derived fire severity. For both lab analysis and fieldwork, the institute focuses on hiring students and recent grad-

uates from Utah universities to build capacity in fire science within the state. ¤

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 5

The byproduct of kiln burning is a value-added product that can be used to speed restoration of the surrounding landscape or sold as a soil supplement to garden centers.

Photos 6 Utahcourtesy Scienceof Darren McEvoy

By Dennis Hinkamp

W

e have used fire to cook,

heat, build, clear land, and manipulate our environment

ever since, well, humans discovered how to make fire appear at will. One of the lesser-studied uses of fire is to improve

soil quality. The soil amendment resulting from burnt biomass such as trees and plants is called biochar.

Biochar is the result of the thermo-

chemical separation that occurs when

biomass is burned to temperatures ranging from 750 - 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. The resulting biochar is highly porous and has a large surface area. When added to soil, it

increases water-holding capacity; extend-

ing the time that water is available to plants.

Biochar’s use as a soil amendment dates back at least 7,000 years to when it was

used by indigenous Amazonian people to improve nutrient-deficient soil.

More recently, Darren McAvoy and the

Utah Biomass Resources Group (UBRG) have demonstrated a practical method

for producing biochar using simple metal

kilns. Why is that useful now? McAvoy says making biochar can mitigate the impact of hazardous fuels for wildfires.

“Hazardous fuels are a problem

across the West,” McAvoy said. “From 2000-2017, bark beetles attacked 85,000

square miles of forests in the western U.S. (an area the size of Utah). The accumulation of this beetle-killed timber occupies

many forested slopes, posing a fire risk to surrounding landscapes and communities.” Also, invasive species such as

Russian olive and tamarisk choke streams

and rivers and prevent native species from growing and supporting the ecosystem.

“The accumulation of beetle-killed

timber and invasive species not only cre-

ates hazardous fuels but, as they decay,

greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) are released into the atmo-

sphere,” he said. “To deal with this excess

fuel, foresters typically remove trees, which generates large quantities of ‘waste wood.’

This waste wood, commonly called slash,

is often burned in piles, releasing stored carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. While it’s effective for

dealing with large quantities of slash, pile

burning also results in extreme heat pulses into the ground, which harms the physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties of the soil under the slash piles.”

At first glance, kiln burning might look

like crews are just burning wood in a dumpster. The key difference is “top burning,”

rather than the traditional way you might

light a campfire or barbeque coals from the bottom, McAvoy explains. This technique

creates a flame-cap which appears to burn cleaner than slash pile burning. This

is because uncombusted materials are consumed as they rise through the “cap” of flames that forms on top of the kiln. The kilns also contain the flames more safely

than piles and they can be flushed out with water to retrieve the biochar. The byproduct of kiln burning is a value-added product

that can be used to speed restoration of the surrounding landscape or sold as a soil supplement to garden centers.

For more than 10 years, McAvoy has

been experimenting with biochar and with

different kiln designs since 2017. They have to be big enough to accommodate large logs and piles of brush, yet small

enough to transport to sometimes remote areas. “Typically, the UBRG uses 5’x5’ kilns

for making biochar, which takes about four

hours to burn down a full load of slash,” he

said. “The Big Box kilns vary in size. My first was 16-feet long, my more recent one is 12-feet long; I am finding that if I keep

them smaller and closer to 2,000 instead of 3,000 pounds, they are easier to transport,

and we need a smaller excavation machine to load them.”

The UBRG hopes to use this kiln more

and increase the efficiency of the burn

process overall, McAvoy said. Scaling-up this approach with the larger kiln allows

land managers to dispose of more excess

forest fuels and reduce the use of pile

burning, which will reduce fire hazards and sequester more carbon. ¤

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 7

By Aubree Thomas

M

ore species of bees live in

the Grand Staircase region of

Utah than there are total bee

species living in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. This extraordinary diversity makes Utah an ideal place to study

bees and other pollinators, but the problem with most study methods is that they

are destructive. In other words, you have to kill a bee before you can learn more about it.

Assistant Professors Jacqualine

Grant, Rachel Bolus, and Lecturer Sam

Wells of Southern Utah University (SUU)

are developing several non-destructive

techniques to study pollinators to gain a

better understanding of their diversity and

to increase native plant seed-collecting ef-

forts in Southern Utah. The SUU research-

ers’ work is supported with funds from the Utah Legislature as part of the Utah State University Public Lands Initiative.

The project is just one example of collab-

orations between USU’s Utah Agricultural

Experiment Station and SUU that have focused on some of the state’s unique agricultural and natural resource issues.

“Bees are in trouble right now,” Grant

said. “They are exposed to pesticides, they are exposed to diseases, and if we can develop some techniques that won’t kill

the bees in the process of studying them

8 Utah Science

and we are able to learn what species are present, it will be more helpful for their populations.”

One method being studied is acoustic

recording, which involves taking microphones out into a field and recording

the sounds bees make as they fly. These recording sessions are done for half an

hour at a time during the peak flying time

of the day, which depends on the species being observed.

“Bees make different sounds when

they fly, and depending on the size of the bee, the sound is slightly different,” Grant explained. “We know this can be used on

bigger bees, but we are piloting this technique to see exactly which kinds of bees it will work for.”

The other method is genetic detec-

tion. When a bee visits a flower, it marks

the plant with the tips of its feet or uses its tongue to get at the nectar. If a bee has visited that flower vigorously enough, those

tiny movements leave enough DNA on the flower that it can be detected and studied.

Grant hopes to take the information

gathered from surveying bees and create

a catalog of bees that live in the area to help scientists and land managers better

understand the relationships between pollinators and specific plants. The work will help identify populations of plants that

could be the focus of restoration efforts and enhancing wildlife habitat.

Grant explained that the researchers

are beginning to branch out and will help create a bigger and clearer picture of what

pollinators in the area need. Their efforts

will help ensure that habitat management and restoration efforts include plants that

are important to pollinators in the area.

The team partners with the Bureau of Land

Management’s Seeds of Success program.

Collecting seeds by hand in the wild

is extraordinarily costly. But by teaming up with seed extractories and farmers in the region, the process is more cost-effective and increases the amount of seed available for restoration work.

“Growing wildflowers is a small but

growing segment of the economy throughout the Intermountain West,” Grant said.

“Instead of growing only alfalfa, farmers can grow several acres of wildflowers and

get millions or billions of valuable seeds compared to the millions that my crew can gather.”

Since the beginning of their work in

August of 2019, Grant and her fellow researchers have collected more than 600 samples to identify bees and an estimated two million native plant seeds. ¤

When a bee visits a flower, it marks the plant with the tips of its feet or uses its tongue to get at the nectar. If a bee has visited that flower vigorously enough, those tiny movements leave enough DNA on the flower that it can be detected and studied.

Above photos courtesy of Jacqualine Grant

Photo courtesy of Lynnette Harris.

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 9

A grazing enclosure. Photo courtesy of John Du Toit

The herd of about 400 bison is one of just four genetically pure American plains bison herds in the world... these animals are critical to maintaining and improving herd genetics all over the U.S.

10 Utah Science

that they want for their cattle,” du Toit said.

“In our study, we asked how much grass are the bison actually removing that the

cattle would otherwise have grazed? How are these bison using the rangeland? How

are they moving around the area from sea-

son to season? Which particular habitats are they preferring?”

Du Toit’s grazing study in the area

began in 2010 with former doctoral student Dustin Ranglack. Using satellite radio collars and fenced-off sections of

vegetation to measure grazing habits of multiple species, the research provided a surprising result.

“We found the bison were having a

relatively light impact on the rangeland,” du Toit said. “They were eating about 14% of

the grass and the cattle were eating about half of the grass, but a full third of the grass was being eaten by jackrabbits.”

Rabbits are a variable that not many

researchers or ranchers had anticipated

would be part of the grazing issue. Du Toit

said with 10 years of data to work with, he and current USU doctoral student Shantell

Garrett will collaborate with the Bureau of Land Management to start a new phase of studying rabbits in the area. Studying

By Bronson Teichert

D

rabbit populations also means studying

iscovering an equilibrium of

economic growth and environmental

sustainability

is

complex. When bison were introduced into one of Utah’s deserts in the 1940s,

they migrated to the Henry Mountains in

south-central Utah where cattle graze on

permits. Utah State University Professor Johan du Toit, a wildland resources re-

searcher, has tackled similar conflicts on multiple continents.

Du Toit grew up on a farm in rural

Zimbabwe and was fascinated by nature.

He studied and worked in multiple African countries to become an ecologist. He said

the knowledge he gained can be applied to ecosystems around the world. He has also learned that the root of a problem is sometimes not obvious.

“The same principles apply wheth-

er I’m working on elk in the greater

Yellowstone area, bison in the Henry

Mountains, African buffalo in the Kruger Park, or giraffe in East Africa,” du Toit said.

The bison in the Henry Mountains are

on public land and managed by the Utah

Division of Wildlife Resources. The herd of

about 400 bison is one of just four genetically pure American plains bison herds in the world. Du Toit said these animals are

critical to maintaining and improving herd genetics all over the U.S.

The cattle sector is Utah’s number one

source of agriculture revenue according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Ranchers in the Henry Mountains run close

to 4,200 cattle in the winter and about 800 in the summer. Cattle in the area have

been part of Utah’s agricultural revenue for generations.

“The ranchers have always been con-

cerned that the bison are eating the grass

their primary predator, coyotes.

Coyotes are risks to cattle ranchers’

livelihoods when calves become targets

instead of elusive jackrabbits or cottontails.

The predators could potentially lower rabbit populations which would, in turn, leave

more forage for cattle and bison. However,

ranchers would have to add coyotes to the long list of risks they face, including drought, shifting market prices, and other unplanned costs.

Du Toit said the next few years of

research will create tools to help land man-

agers and ranchers navigate the balance

of economic growth and environmental sustainability.

“We will have an Extension outreach

component in the study,” du Toit said.

“We hope that all the stakeholders will understand that we’re trying to provide the

science-based evidence that is helpful in making decisions.” ¤

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 11

Beavers Benefit Stream Management and Restoration

By Lynnette Harris and Phaedra Budy

B

eavers are ecosystem engineers, and

important to many arid western ecosys-

tems. Beavers are considered a keystone

species, meaning they have an outsized effect on

their environment even when their physical size and numbers are not large. However, they are not always welcomed or well understood.

USU graduate students Marshall Wolf and

Karen Bartelt work with Associate Professor Phaedra Budy to better understand how the construction

and eventual collapse of beaver dams influence the ecology of floodplains on Utah’s public land. In

addition, Budy is involved in work examining how beaver fare after being relocated from an area in

which they were considered a nuisance. Relocated beaver are tagged with transmitters so their activi-

ties and range can be tracked in their new habitat.

Beaver can play important roles in stream restoration

that aids plant and fish communities, but little has

been documented about whether relocated animals are as effective as beaver that occur naturally in a restoration area.

Through the summer of 2019, Bartelt and Wolf

hade used drones to collect high-resolution aerial images of more than 75 beaver complexes. Data

processing procedures are helping them evaluate

the images and quantify the ecological and geologi-

cal changes associated with those beaver complex-

es. What they learn will help natural resource managers better understand how beaver are influencing productivity, fish habitat quality, and floodplain Photos courtesy of Phaedra Budy.

12 Utah Science

connectivity of Utah’s rivers and streams. ¤

Assessing Vulnerability of Reservoirs to Post-wildfire Sedimentation in the Wasatch Front By Lynnette Harris and Patrick Belmont

I

n a highly regarded article in the journal Earth’s Future, Utah State University researchers Brendan Murphy, Larissa Yocom, and Pat-

rick Belmont urge scientists, land managers, and the public to face

an important reality: “A future without wildfire is not an option in the western United States. Fires have burned in the region for millennia,

and now, the climate is warmer and drier, snowpack is lower, fire seasons are longer, and in some ecosystems, fuels have accumulated for over a century.”

Building structures in areas that historically burned is just one of the

ways people have failed to recognize that frequent wildfires were part of local ecosystems for millennia. Decades of wildfire suppression have left

plentiful fuel for fires now and created the sense that fires are increasing in number and severity. The researchers point out that prior to western settlement, an estimated 4-12% of the region’s landscape burned each year.

Decades of fire suppression in forests and rangelands were also a time

when reliable water sources, including new dams, and new transportation

The researchers stress that the diversity of western ecosystems means

no single solution to managing fuels, fire, and water. But wherever fires burn, debris and soil that is laid bare in a fire end up choking waterways and decreasing the water quality and capacity of reservoirs.

The researchers’ ongoing assessment of how wildfires cause sedi-

mentation that threatens the west’s already scarce water supply is sup-

ported by the Utah Public Lands Initiative and a large collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation. It provides three additional years of funding which allows the team, including student research assistants,

to replicate its analysis for all 133 large reservoirs (> 1,000+ acre-feet) throughout Utah.

In 2019, the researchers met with representatives from the U.S. Forest

Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Utah Division of Fire,

Forestry and State Lands, and Salt Lake City Public Utilities to discuss details of the project and how it can align with the agency’s management objectives and concerns. ¤

Beyond the 1984 Perspective: Narrow Focus on Modern Wildfire Trends Underestimates Future Risks to Water Security by Brendan Murphy, Larissa Yocom, and Patrick Belmont is ranked among the top 20 highest-impact papers ever published by the American Geophysical Union’s prestigious journal Earth’s Future. Belmont said, “The paper has begun to realign public perspectives to understand that increased occurrence of wildfire is an inevitable part of the foreseeable future in the western U.S. and we need to better align development and risk assessment strategies with that future.”

The paper is available online at

tinyurl.com/water-and-wildfire

Photo courtesy of Patrick Belmont.

infrastructure in the 11 western states, brought more people to the region.

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 13

Photo courtesy of Douglas Ramsey.

Unmanned Aerial Systems Monitor Mine Reclamation Success

By Lynnette Harris and Douglas Ramsey

O

ften, the best way to see what’s

happening

on

the

ground is from the air, espe-

cially when the goal is to monitor the condition of large areas as they change over time.

A collaboration between Utah State

University’s Remote Sensing/GIS Lab and the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mines (DOGM) is developing an effective

landscape-monitoring tool to help land managers evaluate reclamation activities across the state.

The current test site is the Wilberg-

Cottonwood coal mine located near

Castle Dale, Utah, which has undergone reclamation activities to return the mine

14 Utah Science

site to natural conditions. It is PacifiCorp’s responsibility to do reclamation work at the

site, and the partnership has yielded important data and tested methods that can

be applied to monitoring and managing other disturbed sites.

Drones equipped with high-resolution

cameras capture images that are paired

with topographic data and allow the team to monitor changes where soils were

“pocked” by a trackhoe to produce thousands of micro-watersheds and support

new vegetation. The approximately 13,500 pocks in the reclaimed area slow water

as it moves downhill, curbing erosion and

trapping water which aids nearby plants.

Over time, seeded vegetation will grow and

the pocks will fill with sediment, leaving the landscape in a semi-natural condition.

The aerial images allow the DOGM to

monitor the landscape in detail which was not available to land managers in the past.

Scientists and land managers will be able to build on the aerial and ground-based

data to create a template for monitoring other reclamation sites.

Researchers involved in the project

are in USU’s Department of Wildland

Resources: Douglas Ramsey, professor and director of the Remote Sensing/GIS Laboratory; Christopher McGinty, associate professor and the lab’s associate

director; and graduate research assistant Christopher Brown. ¤

Assessing Post-fire Reseeding Efforts in Box Elder County W

By Lynnette Harris and Eric Thacker ildfires on public rangeland have altered the plant communities on which wildlife and

grazing animals feed. Annual grasses top

the list of invaders that thrive shortly after a fire, including non-native cheatgrass that

crowds out native grasses and other plants that were key elements of pre-fire, sagebrush steppe ecosystems.

Research on Box Elder County, Utah,

rangeland, led by Eric Thacker, associate

professor of wildland resources, is examining

the success of post-fire revegetation and seeding treatments.

Cheatgrass outcompetes native, peren-

nial grasses because it gets an earlier start in the spring and has already taken up water

and broadcast its seeds. When other grasses

would be thriving in the summer, cheatgrass has dried and become fuel for wildfires.

Thacker’s research team has begun

examining the establishment of seeded plant species in areas that were treated

following fires. They will examine whether various treatments are capable of limiting or reversing the dominance of invasive annual grasses by gathering plant samples and

Photos courtesy of Eric Thacker.

data at on-the-ground sites and using the Rangeland Analysis Platform tool that provides a vast library of satellite images over time of the study areas. The researchers

began on-the-ground sampling in summer 2019 and continue their work this summer at sites across the county.

Determining the varying degrees of

treatment success and whether they created

more resilient and stable plant communities will help guide land managers’ decisions about future re-seeding efforts. ¤

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 15

By Lynnette Harris and Traci Hillyard

A

ssistant Professor Janice Brahney didn’t go looking for

minuscule plastic particles in some of the West’s bestknown and “pristine” places, but that’s what she found.

Brahney, a biogeochemist in Utah State University’s

Department of Watershed Sciences, was pilot testing new equip-

ment she designed to collect samples of particles deposited by wind and precipitation by gathering samples over 14 months in 11 national parks and wilderness areas in the western U.S.

She was prepared to identify minerals and organic matter

among the millions of dust particles, but when samples were under

the microscope, she found an array of brightly colored beads and shards. Brahney and her colleagues identified the composition of the plastics and polymers to identify sources of plastic emitted into the atmosphere and track its movement and fallout.

“We were shocked at the estimated deposition rates and kept

trying to figure out where our calculations went wrong,” Brahney

said. “We then confirmed through 32 different particle scans that

roughly 4% of the atmospheric particles analyzed from these remote locations were synthetic polymers.”

That surprising finding—and the accompanying questions it

raises about the possible impacts of microplastics in ecosystems

and in the air we breathe—captured the attention of science writers worldwide when Brahney and her co-authors published their findings in the journal Science in mid-June. In the paper, researchers

16 Utah Science

point out that their estimates of the volume of plastic particulates carried by air masses and deposited miles from their sources are

conservative because clear and white particles did not meet the experiment’s standard for being counted, meaning fragments of clear plastics like water bottles were not included.

The world produced 348 million metric tons of plastic in 2017,

and while it’s resilience and longevity make plastics particularly

useful in everyday life, these same properties lead to progressive fragmentation instead of degradation in the environment. These “microplastics” are known to accumulate in wastewaters, rivers,

and ultimately the worlds’ oceans, and as Brahney’s team shows, they also accumulate in the atmosphere.

“Several studies have attempted to quantify the global plastic

cycle but were unaware of the atmospheric limb,” Brahney said.

“Our data show the plastic cycle is reminiscent of the global water cycle, having atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial lifetimes.”

The study, supported by the Utah Agricultural Experiment

Station, National Science Foundation and an agreement with the

USDA Forest Service, examined the source and life history of both wet (rain) and dry microplastic deposition. Cities and population

centers were found to serve as the initial source of plastics associated with wet deposition, but secondary sources included the

redistribution of microplastics re-entrained from soils or surface

waters. In contrast, dry deposition of plastics showed indicators

Photos by Dennis Hinkamp.

Above: Microscope image of microplastics in atmospheric particulate samples. 500 pm. Photo courtesy of Janice Brahney.

of long-range transport and was associated with large-scale at-

mospheric patterns. This suggests that microplastics are small enough to be entrained in the atmosphere for cross-continental transport.

The team’s field and lab personnel used sterile sampling

equipment, personal protection, and protocols to minimize par-

ticle contamination. Most of the plastics deposited in both wet and dry samples were microfibers sourced from both clothing and industrial materials. Approximately 30% of the particles were

brightly colored microbeads, but not those commonly associated with personal care products. These microbeads were acrylic and

likely derived from industrial paints and coatings. Other particles

were fragments of larger pieces of plastic. The report notes, “This result, combined with the size distribution of identified plastics,

and the relationship to global-scale climate patterns, suggest that plastic emission sources have extended well beyond our

population centers and, through their longevity, spiral through the Earth system.”

Results from this study highlight the source, transport, and

fate of plastics on Earth surfaces as well as the contamination

of U.S. protected environments. Examining weekly wet and monthly dry samples from 11 sites—including the High Uintas

Wilderness, Craters of the Moon National Monument, and Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Rocky Mountain, and Joshua Tree

national parks—allowed the authors to estimate that more than

1,000 tons of microplastics are deposited onto protected lands in the western U.S. each year, equivalent to more than 123 million plastic water bottles.

Brahney said seeing plastics in the samples came at a “won-

derfully serendipitous moment” of having just the right people available to contribute their skills and knowledge to aspects of the project that were not her expertise.

Among the study’s co-authors are Brahney’s former lab

technician, Eric Heim, and Margaret Hallerud, an undergraduate student researcher. Hallerud wrote the computer code to

back-link the atmospheric trajectory models to population data

and assisted in interpreting climate data. She will start graduate school at the University of Maine in the fall and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Heim was

the technician in Brahney’s lab who ran Hallerud’s models and generated the spatial data. Heim is currently a technician at the

University of Colorado Boulder. The paper’s other co-authors are

Maura Hahnenberger in the Geosciences Department at Salt Lake

Community College and Suja Sukumaran in the Material Sciences Division of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

“This ubiquity of microplastics in the atmosphere and the sub-

sequent deposition to remote terrestrial and aquatic environments raise widespread ecological and societal concerns,” Brahney

said. “Identifying the key mechanisms of plastic emission to the atmosphere is a first step in developing global-scale solutions.” ¤

Volume 72 Issue 1/2020 17

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