Prized for their pelts, North American beavers were nearly hunted to extinction by the late 19th century. Still viewed as a nuisance by many, the big-toothed rodents are emerging as partners in efforts to restore declining stream ecosystems affected by climate change.

Once pushed to the brink of extinction following European settlement, beavers may be a key to helping people of the West manage dwindling water resources. Photo by Cadel Wheaton.

“Since the arrival of European settlers, many streams throughout the West have become incised – meaning their beds have been lowered by erosion – and the habitat they provide has subsequently degraded,” says Joe Wheaton, assistant professor in Utah State University’s Department of Watershed Sciences and the USU Ecology Center. “As incised streams are disconnected from floodplains and tend to be deep ditches with homogenous habitat, they are generally considered poor habitat for fish, plants and other wildlife.”

A solution, he says, is help from nature’s engineer: the ingenious beaver. With USU colleague Nick Bouwes, along with scientists from Seattle’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the South Fork Research and Eco Logical Research, Wheaton published findings in a recent issue of BioScience.

“Incised stream ecosystems can recover naturally, but the process may take centuries to millennia,” says Wheaton, director of the USU Ecogeomorphology and Topographic Analysis Lab, known as “ET-AL.”

“When dealing with species like Steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act, we simply may not be able to afford to wait for recovery.”

Joe Wheaton is an assistant professor in USU’s Department of Watershed Sciences and the USU Ecology Center. He and colleagues published research on use of beavers for stream restoration in a recent issue of ‘BioScience.’

Conventional attempts to restore these systems require use of heavy, mechanical equipment, he says, and methods that are intrusive and expensive to implement over long reaches of rivers and streams.

“Beavers do a much better job than we do, and have a much longer track record of river engineering,” Wheaton says. “Using beaver dams or beaver dam analogues, we can pursue a less obtrusive and much cheaper alternative restoration process that relies on working with physical processes as well as exploiting ecological processes.”

While studying beavers, Wheaton and his colleagues developed a beaver planning tool called BRAT (Beaver Restoration and Assessment Tool) that is currently being implemented with support from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources across the entire state of Utah.

“Beavers are not the solution everywhere, but the tool helps develop realistic expectations about where these stubborn little mammals may be able to help,” he says.

Wheaton is featured speaker for USU’s Science Unwrapped public outreach program Friday, Sept. 11, 2015.

A study led by USU Biology alum Bridget Olson, MS’11 reveals the Great Salt Lake and its boundary areas, including northern Utah’s Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, provide a crucial stopover for a widely separated shorebird species that migrates long distances each year.

At Utah’s Great Salt Lake, USU alum Bridget Olson, right, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, and colleague Adrian Farmer prepare to tag a shorebird called the Marbled Godwit with a satellite transmitter.

“The study reveals critical information about migratory connectivity for the Marbled Godwit, a species of high conservation concern in the United States and Canada,” says Olson, a deputy project leader with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Olson, along with USU ornithologist Kimberly Sullivan and USFWS colleague Adrian Farmer, published findings of what could be the first demonstration of a continental “crisscross” migration pattern in a shorebird in a recent issue of The Condor, journal of the Cooper Ornithological Society.

“Our study focuses on North American populations of the Marbled Godwit, a long-bodied shorebird with a distinctive, two-colored beak,” says Sullivan, associate professor in USU’s Department of Biology. “The Bear River refuge and Great Salt Lake host a high percentage of the bird’s population each year – up to 43,000 birds a day during peak migration.”

To conduct the study, the scientists captured birds in Utah, Canada’s James Bay, Mexico’s western coast and the Georgia coast. The researchers fitted individual godwits with satellite transmitters, which enabled tracking of three breeding subpopulations.

The largest of these subpopulations – about 170,000 individuals – breeds in the prairies of the western United States and Canada, Sullivan says. Some 2,000 birds breed in Alaska and another group of about 2,000 breeds in eastern Canada’s James Bay, between Ontario and Quebec.

Olson uses a mist net to capture birds for a migratory connectivity study. She published findings of the research, conducted with USU faculty member Kimberly Sullivan and USFWS colleague Adrian Farmer, in ‘The Condor.’

“We expected to confirm the long-held hypothesis that the breeding population in eastern Canada migrates south along the Atlantic seaboard to wintering areas along the Georgia coast,” Sullivan says. “To our surprise, that wasn’t the case. Instead, birds we tagged in eastern Canada crossed the continent to winter along the Gulf of California in Mexico.”

Further, the researchers noted migration routes of the Georgia-tagged birds crossed over those of the eastern Canada-tagged birds in the mid-continental United States. Birds tagged at Great Salt Lake also traveled to mid-continental prairies and, contrary to expectations, used an overland route through the southwestern U.S., rather than following the Pacific coast, to wintering sites in Mexico.

“Shorebirds use a ‘hop,’ ‘skip,’ or ‘jump’ migration strategy, referring to distances covered between successive stopovers,” she says. “A ‘hop’ is a short distance; a ‘jump’ a much longer distance. The birds use different strategies depending on resources available at stopover sites.”

What didn’t surprise the researchers, Olson says, is the importance of the Great Salt Lake as a stopover in the birds’ travels. Identifying the shorebird’s staging sites is an important part of developing conservation management plans for migratory species.

“This information helps us know where to focus our efforts,” she says. “It allows us to examine the risks and threats that the species is exposed to at these disparate locations.”

The study emphasizes the important of Great Salt Lake conservation efforts.

“A portion of the birds’ Utah habitat remains unprotected,” Sullivan says. “The Great Salt Lake, especially portions of the Bear River Bay outside refuge boundaries are vulnerable to mineral extraction development and habitat degradation from municipal and agricultural uses.”

The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, a national standard for measuring graduate school faculty members’ productivity in United States universities, ranks Utah State University’s doctoral program in fisheries science and management among the top three in the nation.

Chris Luecke, Dean of the Quinney College of Natural Resources, shares his passion with students.

“Our faculty members have been extremely productive at competing for research funding,” says Chris Luecke, dean of USU’s Quinney College of Natural Resources. “This funding allows us to attract outstanding graduate students and enables us to work collaboratively with some of the best aquatic research groups in the world. Our faculty and students publish results of their research in top academic journals.”

The college’s Watershed Sciences doctoral program offers integrative study in hydrologic sciences, aquatic ecology and remote sensing. Collaborating extensively with entities on and off campus, the department is an integral part of the USU Water Initiative, a university-wide consortium that fosters interdisciplinary research.

“I chose USU because of its reputation, the caliber of the faculty and the research opportunities it offered in my areas of interest,” says USU Watershed Sciences alum Susannah Erwin, M.E.’10, PhD’12, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “I’ve really enjoyed the diverse community and the collaboration that goes on here.”

Three federal research groups, the Utah Cooperative Fisheries and Wildlife Research Unit, the National Aquatic Monitoring Center and the Fish and Aquatic Ecology Unit, are all housed within WATS. USU faculty and student researchers’ collaboration with federal groups propels them to the front line of conservation efforts throughout the American West. Their work impacts critical and imperiled ecosystems, including the Great Salt Lake, the Colorado River and the Bear River Watershed.

USU students train to become the next generation of water experts by getting their feet wet.

In its research efforts, the water quality team has implemented a series of water quality monitoring stations in the Bear River Watershed, which covers some 7,500 square miles of mountain and valley lands straddling the states of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. Real-time information from these stations is displayed on the research program’s Web site – www.bearriverinfo.org – that is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In addition, WATS is home to the Western Center for Assessment and Monitoring of Freshwater Ecosystems, which develops and implements scientific methods for monitoring and assessing the condition of the nation’s aquatic resources. Techniques developed by the center were adopted by the EPA in its quest to enforce the nation’s Clean Water Act.

WATS also houses the Intermountain Center for River Rehabilitation and Restoration, which focuses on education, research and public outreach to restore and ensure the health of western rivers. ICRRR researchers partner with federal managers in projects involving major river systems, including the Colorado River, the Snake River and other western river systems.

Developed by Academic Analytics, the FSP Index ranks 7,294 individual doctoral programs in 104 disciplines at 354 institutions. The institutions are categorized as large research universities – those with 15 or more doctoral programs – and small research universities. USU falls in the large research university category.

“If you want to secure Utah’s water future, look to tomorrow’s leaders,” says USU water scientist Nancy Mesner. “Engage young people in efforts to protect watershed health.”

Utah students collect stream samples while experiencing what it’s like to perform hands-on science.

Mesner and her graduate student Andreé Walker undertook this challenge at the start of the decade with the development of curriculum to help Utah’s teachers convey fundamental ideas in an engaging and effective way. The result was Stream Side Science, a comprehensive, 200-page booklet of lesson plans and hands-on water-related activities for 9th Grade Earth Systems Science classes.

In 2004, then-Gov. Olene Walker officially adopted the curriculum, which aligns with national and state core curriculum standards, as part of her Watershed Initiative. Now in its third edition, some 100,000 Utah students have benefited from the curriculum, which is used in not only 9th grade classrooms, but in grades ranging from 5th through 12th in public and private schools throughout Utah.

"Reaching youths is a critical way of changing long-term behaviors," says Mesner, director of USU Water Quality Extension and faculty member in USU’s Department of Watershed Sciences. "We’re instilling these students with a sense of stewardship over their natural world and an understanding of how their actions affect a community and a way of life they love.”

Memorizing scientific terminology in a classroom setting doesn’t it cut it, she says. Stream Side Science features activities that take teens outdoors to monitor and observe natural streams, wetlands and forested areas in their own watersheds.

“Students learn, first-hand, how their activities in watersheds affect both the big picture and their daily lives,” Mesner says. “They develop a sense of ownership and a desire to learn about the types of action each of us can take to protect these waters.”

For her efforts, Mesner received a Utah Watershed Improvement Award from the Governor’s Office in 2004 and a Calvin K. Sudweeks Water Quality Award in 2009 from the Utah Division of Water Quality.

Last January, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a State of Emergency following projections of severe drought. State bureaucrats and local officials jumped into action and mandated any number of water conservation tactics. While some have been relatively successful, most will do nothing. In fact, it appears that despite the drought, water use may have actually increased in the past year.

Randy Simmons emphasizes the importance of economic reasoning to better understand public policy to his students.

So, exactly how much do Californians value their decreasing supply of drinkable water? According to the California Water Service Company, it is valued at less than a penny per gallon. If water were plentiful, an almost-zero price would not be a problem, but under the current situation it is truly a catastrophe. The average American uses 100 gallons per day, Californians average 124, and in some regions of California up to 379 gallons per person per day. That sounds a bit outrageous for a state experiencing a drought of Biblical-plague proportions, doesn't it?

The solution to rectifying California's abysmal water conservation record might be found in California's agricultural sector. In just the past year, prices for irrigation water have risen from ten to almost 40 times last year's price. Those who have the water to spare can make a sizable profit by selling it to those who need it. Thus, because the value of water has significantly increased, every gallon is a precious commodity that is not wasted.

Allowing price to ration water may be a bitter political pill to swallow, but it makes economic and environmental sense. There are examples of this economic solution working in the past. Cities like Santa Fe, Tucson, and Fort Worth allowed price signals to govern water use — the more a household used, the more expensive water was to purchase. Consumers responded by conserving water. These measures worked so well utilities were forced to stabilize the sharp drop in revenue by reconfiguring rates. That is not a bad thing — especially during a drought as austere as California's.

But won't raising prices only hurt the poor and have little effect on those who have the money to afford it anyways?

Charging more for water need not create undue hardship for poor or lower middle class families. Establish a minimal per capita water use level and then charge progressive water rates so that any extra water used is billed at a higher rate. This allows consumers to choose if they are willing to pay for an extra long shower, to water their lawn, or to wash their car.

This solution would not even require much change in the way water is already billed. Typically, water usage is billed at three tiers of usage. For example, in Bakersfield, the price of water is as follows: $1.66 per 100 cubic feet of water for the first 1,300 cubic feet used, $1.80 per 100 cubic feet of water for the next 2,100 cubic feet used, and $2.09 for every 100 cubic feet of water used after that (a cubic foot of water is roughly 7.48 gallons).

Drought in California and the impact on agriculture is just one example of the profound effect of climate change.

That's only a difference of 43 cents from the basic rate to the charge for unlimited use. Why not increase the price of the second and third tiers by a dollar — or two or three for that matter? Doing so would have little effect on a family that expends the effort to conserve.

Take an average family of four, each using 100 gallons of water per person per day. Over the course of a month this family would use about 1,600 cubic feet of water. The first tier could be raised to 1,600 cubic feet and the second and third tiers adjusted accordingly. A simple adjustment of the water bill would ensure that any family, regardless of economic status, would be able to afford a comfortable level of water while being charged for any water usage above and beyond that base amount. This approach is fair to those struggling financially, but it also puts pressure on everyone to conserve a scarce resource.

Raise the price of water. Signal to consumers that it is a valuable and precious resource. Let consumers make their own decisions on how they allocate their resources in using, or conserving, water.

Water policy, irrigation engineering and climate science are not topics that typically attract social scientists; however, Douglas Jackson-Smith, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station researcher and Utah State University professor of sociology, thinks it’s exactly where sociologists should be focused.

“People have always impacted how water moves around the landscape, but our ability to understand our water system with humans as part of the story is not as good as it needs to be,” Jackson-Smith said. “One of our big questions is how different human settlement patterns affect water use and water quality.”

Doug Jackson-Smith, USU Professor of Sociology, focuses his work on how human settlement patterns affect water use and water quality.

Of particular interest to Jackson-Smith is learning how water use changes when areas transition from agricultural to recreational, exurban and suburban housing patterns. Through a major National Science Foundation-funded project called innovative Urban Transitions and Aridregion Hydro-sustainability (iUTAH), Jackson-Smith and an interdisciplinary team of researchers from several of the state’s universities work together gathering scientific information about how the water systems of the rapidly urbanizing Wasatch Range Metropolitan Area are changing.

Among the least studied, but critically important components of Utah’s changing water picture are systems managed by cities and the many irrigation and canal companies that continue to supply water not only to agriculture, but also to thousands of residential users.

“A lot of people who study water have focused on individuals and how we use water in our homes, or they study big water policy issues like Colorado River agreements that come into play when the federal government is involved and water crosses state lines,” Jackson-Smith said. “Those are not unimportant to our water future, but there is a middle scale of water actors, including city public water utilities and irrigation companies, whose actions are not well understood, yet who make what I think are some of the most important decisions about water in Utah.”

He believes that is especially true in areas where there is a history of crop irrigation and the older canal infrastructure is not yet gone. Jackson-Smith explained that in Logan City alone, an estimated 12 irrigation companies still supply secondary water to residents who have water shares, all in the same areas that the city supplies culinary water. Similar arrangements exist in other parts of Utah where hundreds of independent water suppliers each manage parts of the water system. The problem with this arrangement, Jackson-Smith said, is that all water is part of a larger, interconnected system and managing it in pieces with little coordination is not likely to be sustainable.

Utah’s existing water supply system was designed to support life-sustaining agriculture in the state’s early years, and has evolved to support growing industry and urban populations. Now, the system is often being asked to do things it was not designed to do. Transitioning water from rural to urban uses is constrained by traditional water management organizations, existing infrastructure and legal arrangements that are not well equipped to facilitate transfers of water rights to new users.

While the state’s projections for future water use include transfers of some water from agricultural to urban use, it is a relatively small percentage of the planned future water supply for urban customers and this raises challenges for meeting the needs of a population of five or six million people.

“Water use is a sensitive subject anywhere in the west because water is critical to social and economic viability. Yet gathering information about how water is used in transitioning landscapes is a critical piece of science that should guide decision making,” Jackson-Smith said.