Utah division seeks Great Salt Lake research proposals
Mar 3, 2025, 5:31 PM
The Great Salt Lake is pictured by the north end of Stansbury Island in Tooele County on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. The Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and Public Lands is seeking Great Salt Lake research proposals to fund in the 2026 fiscal year. (Kristin Murphy/Deseret News)
(Kristin Murphy/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands is looking for Great Salt Lake research proposals. Selected projects will be funded for the 2026 fiscal year.
In a recent Facebook post, the division said Great Salt Lake research projects can last one or two years.
According to Angela Gong, the Great Salt Lake program manager for the Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands, this is the first year the division is encouraging applicants to propose two-year projects.
“That’s a bit of a change, partly because we know that there’s just a lot of really important and great research that doesn’t line up perfectly with the fiscal year,” said Gong.
Previous Great Salt Lake research
Gong said previous funding cycles have helped the division learn a lot about managing the lake.
For example, previous Great Salt Lake research projects have helped better understand shorebirds, microbialites and brine flies, and the flow of water between the north and south arms of the lake.
American avocets search for food on a sand bar at the Great Salt Lake, near Magna on September 24, 2024. (Scott G. Winterton, Deseret News)
“It’s a pretty broad range of things that we’ve funded in the past,” said Gong.
Gong said the division will be prioritizing Great Salt Lake research proposals that help the division improve their care of the lake.
“We’re really trying to prioritize making sure the research really is knowledge that we need to better manage the lake,” said Gong. “There are [an] infinite number of things that would be interesting to know, but … the division is running these with the objective of being better managers.”
‘Hot topics’
Each year, the Great Salt Lake Technical Team identifies “hot topics,” or ideas that research might address.
These are the topics they’ve chosen for this year’s Great Salt Lake research proposals:
- Salinity matrix extremes
- Microbialites
- Water management and budget
- Brine flies
- Salt balance
- Phragmites and wetland vegetation
- Lake bathymetry
- Microbiome inventory
- Dust
More details on each of the topics can be found on the division website.
Although the team identified topics for Great Salt Lake research proposals, the division said it is open to other ideas as well.
Additionally, proposals don’t have to focus exclusively on one topic.
Previously, the division has received proposals from government agencies, universities and private research groups. Gong said the program is a chance for experts to collaborate.
Related: New study says Utahns, especially farmers, need to cut water use by 35% to save Great Salt Lake
