Stakeholder Engagement Resources

This project promotes public engagement by sharing winter ozone research and air quality information with community members, stakeholders, and decision-makers. Regular committee and group meetings are held to provide updates on ongoing work and to gather feedback that helps guide research and outreach efforts. Public resources such as basinwx.com, the Ozone Alert Program, and informational fact sheets help make air quality data easier to access and understand. Outreach materials, including videos and educational content shared through social media, help communicate winter ozone science to a broader audience.
Seth Lyman, John Lawson, Michael Davies, and Megan Couture
Funding: Utah Legislature, SSD1

BinghamRC

Project Updates and Resources

Updated March 2026

  • Work with Stakeholder Guidance Committee
    • Committee meetings are held regularly to provide updates on project progress and ongoing activities. These meetings also create opportunities for stakeholders to offer feedback and recommendations, which are used to help guide and improve the project’s research, tools, and outreach efforts.

    • All committee meetings for 2026 have been tentatively scheduled to support ongoing coordination and stakeholder engagement. In addition, web-based tools are being developed to more effectively share project updates, information, and resources with stakeholders and the broader public.

  • Operate Real-time Data Website
    • The website https://basinwx.com is currently operational and is being continuously maintained and improved to enhance functionality, usability, and access to air quality and weather information.

  • Ozone Alert Program
    • The Ozone Alert Program was successfully implemented during the Winter 2025–2026 season and has now concluded for the current winter period.

  • Uinta Basin Ozone Working Group
    • Group meetings are held to keep participants informed about project progress and to facilitate discussion of relevant topics and updates. The next meeting is planned for April 2026.

  • Fact Sheets and Outreach
    • Fact sheets and outreach videos are being developed to communicate wintertime ozone research to a broad audience. Two fact sheets have been completed, with additional materials currently in development. Several outreach videos are also in progress and will be shared through the USU Winter Basin’s Facebook and Instagram platforms to expand public awareness and engagement.



More Information

Stakeholders Chart



Work with Stakeholder Guidance Committee

We have started a new approach to receiving stakeholder input to guide our air quality research.  In the past, we have created an annual research plan and sent the plan to a group of stakeholders for review.  These individuals reviewed our annual plan and provided input.  That method yielded valuable information that led us in new research directions.  After conversations with some USU experts in stakeholder engagement, however, we felt like a new approach would better ensure that the work we do is focused on what stakeholders need to address our Basin’s air quality problems.  The idea of the new approach is to garner input across the entire research process, at the planning (including initial idea generation), execution, analysis, and dissemination stages.

In 2025 we established this stakeholder group, including the members in the chart. We met with the committee in April, July, and September, and we have another meeting scheduled for January 2026.  We spent the first three meetings helping the committee understand what we already know about wintertime air quality in the Uinta Basin, what research our team is currently engaged in, and what research interests members of the group have. In 2026, we will engage these stakeholders quarterly and seek input from them on current projects, ideas for new projects, and suggestions on making our research more accessible and useful for stakeholders.  In particular, we have a plan to work together with the committee to plan and begin execution of a research project.

Operate Real-time Data Website

We have created a new real-time data and forecasting website, https://basinwx.com/, to replace our old website, ubair.usu.edu. The new site provides data about air quality and meteorological conditions around the Uinta Basin and, like the previous site, will be used by industry, government, and the public to assess current air quality conditions.  

The primary focus of the site is providing a mobile-friendly, simple but reliable way to access information about Basin air quality, including an archive of outlooks issued by Ozone Alert (the email system is preserved as a redundancy in case of website failure). Other features are in development:

  • Road-weather conditions and web-cam locations displayed on a map (data from Utah Dept. of Transportation)
  • Aviation weather products (e.g., cross-winds at Vernal)
  • Further forecast graphics from the Clyfar model (eventually interactive)
  • Weather conditions from live observations and national forecasting models
  • I. summaries of weather and air-quality outlooks in plain or complex language

Issues or comments can be sent to the project lead, john.lawson@usu.edu, but also filed online at https://github.com/Bingham-Research-Center/ubair-website/issues for continued updates on how the team addresses the request or bug in question.

Carry Out Ozone Alert Program

We will continue to operate our ozone alert program (http://binghamresearch.usu.edu/OzoneAlert.  The purpose of the program is to alert oil and gas operators and others when high ozone is forecast so they can take action to reduce ozone-forming emissions.  For winter 2025-26, the program will use forecasts generated by Clyfar, our quantitative forecast system. Outlooks will be sent via the email as a parallel redundancy for the BasinWx system, ensuring forecasts are still issued in the event of a website crash. The email program will be active for the full season (1 December to 15 March). The website should not be used for critical decisions without cross-reference with official sources (i.e., the email alert text) due to the developmental and changing nature of the website.

We are testing AI summaries of forecasts that both condense forecast information for quick reference and communicate it in various levels of complexity: plain-language or more technical.

Facilitate Uinta Basin Ozone Working Group

The Uinta Basin Ozone Working Group is a collaborative forum to facilitate the attainment of the ozone standard in the Uinta Basin (https://www.usu.edu/basinozonegroup). The group includes representation from government, industry, researchers, and environmental advocates. We will continue to facilitate the ozone working group in 2026.

Create Fact Sheets

Our stakeholder group has indicated that fact sheets to give basic, lay-oriented information about our team’s research outcomes are needed.  The target audience for the fact sheets will be oil and gas companies, government entities, and the public, and their purpose will be to allow these groups to understand and engage with our research without having to decipher the dense, technical writing in peer-reviewed publications and reports. 

We have already created one fact sheet, which is available at https://www.usu.edu/binghamresearch//fact_sheets/factsheet001_seasonalchem.pdf.  We will create more fact sheets on topics identified as a need by our stakeholder group.  We will create a page on our main website, https://www.usu.edu/binghamresearch/, to host these fact sheets, and we will create an email list or other network, to include social media, to disseminate the fact sheets to potential users.