Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID UT_2024_Lant

The Potential for Virtual Water Trade to Augment Water Availability in the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River Basins

Institute: Utah
Year Established: 2024 Start Date: 2024-09-01 End Date: 2025-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $32,001 Total Non-Federal Funds: $32,036

Principal Investigators: Christopher Lant

Project Summary: Utah’s primary river basins, Great Salt Lake and the Colorado, both suffer from structural deficits where water demand is outrunning supply, leading to unsustainable reservoir depletions in Great Salt Lake, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Developing a full set of options to address this environmental crisis requires an assessment of the consumption-based water footprint of the population and the volume and location of water resources used to meet this footprint. This includes traditional measures but also virtual water trade embedded in water-intensive industrial and agricultural products. This project will provide the data needed to quantify water footprints and virtual water trade, while integrating data from existing studies to develop the accounting framework as a whole for both of Utah’s major river basins. It will also develop scenarios that illustrate the trade-offs among population growth, per capita water footprint, reservoir depletion and virtual water trade in closing Utah’s structural water deficit.