scholarly journals Lake-Breeze Fronts in the Salt Lake Valley

2007 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel E. Zumpfe ◽  
John D. Horel

Abstract Winds at the Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) during the April–October period from 1948 to 2003 have been observed to shift to the north (up-valley direction) between late morning and afternoon on over 70% of the days without precipitation. Lake-breeze fronts that develop as a result of the differential heating between the air over the nearby Great Salt Lake and that over the lake’s surroundings are observed at SLC only a few times each month. Fewer lake-breeze fronts are observed during late July–early September than before or after that period. Interannual fluctuations in the areal extent of the shallow Great Salt Lake contribute to year-to-year variations in the number of lake-breeze frontal passages at SLC. Data collected during the Vertical Transport and Mixing Experiment (VTMX) of October 2000 are used to examine the structure and evolution of a lake-breeze front that moved through the Salt Lake Valley on 17 October. The onset of upslope and up-valley winds occurred within the valley prior to the passage of the lake-breeze front. The lake-breeze front moved at roughly 3 m s−1 up the valley and was characterized near the surface by an abrupt increase in wind speed and dewpoint temperature over a distance of 3–4 km. Rapid vertical mixing of aerosols at the top of the 600–800-m-deep boundary layer was evident as the front passed.

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Charles G. (Jack) Oviatt ◽  
Genevieve Atwood ◽  
Benjamin J.C. Laabs ◽  
Paul W. Jewell ◽  
Harry M. Jol

ABSTRACT On this field trip we visit three sites in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah, USA, where we examine the geomorphology of the Bonneville shoreline, the history of glaciation in the Wasatch Range, and shorezone geomorphology of Great Salt Lake. Stop 1 is at Steep Mountain bench, adjacent to Point of the Mountain in the Traverse Mountains, where the Bonneville shoreline is well developed and we can examine geomorphic evidence for the behavior of Lake Bonneville at its highest levels. At Stop 2 at the mouths of Little Cottonwood and Bells Canyons in the Wasatch Range, we examine geochronologic and geomorphic evidence for the interaction of mountain glaciers with Lake Bonneville. At the Great Salt Lake at Stop 3, we can examine modern processes and evidence of the Holocene history of the lake, and appreciate how Lake Bonneville and Great Salt Lake are two end members of a long-lived lacustrine system in one of the tectonically generated basins of the Great Basin.


Urban Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivis García ◽  
Jeni Crookston

This article explores concepts related to connectivity and usership of the Jordan River Parkway Trail (JRPT) and the North Temple corridor—two locations or nodes that link together in a larger transportation network along the west side of Salt Lake City, Utah, a low-income, racially and ethnically diverse area. The JRPT is a multi-use trail providing regional connectivity for bicycles and pedestrians. It intersects North Temple, a transit development corridor accommodating automobiles, light rail, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians. Although the purposes of each corridor differ, one being recreational and one being commercial, the modes of transportation for each corridor overlap through active transportation—that is, biking and walking. The questions that drive this paper are: (1) How are these two neighborhood assets are connected and form a larger transportation network? and, (2) How can connectivity and usership be improved? The idea of increasing the utilization of the JRPT through increasing destinations along North Temple and vice versa is explored. Community feedback was gathered through a survey which was distributed to 299 residents who live less than a mile from each subnetwork. Extracted from the responses were key aspects of connectivity, accessibility, and the purposes of each corridor for the community as a whole to understand how they are connected and how they affect each other. More broadly, urban policy recommendations that increase active transportation connectivity and usership of two sets of links—that is, regional trails and transit-oriented corridors such as the JRPT and the North Temple corridor are described.


Author(s):  
Emily J. Kleber ◽  
Adam P. McKean ◽  
Adam I. Hiscock ◽  
Michael D. Hylland ◽  
Christian L. Hardwick ◽  
...  

Abstract The 18 March 2020 Mw 5.7 Magna, Utah, earthquake was the largest earthquake in Utah since the 1992 ML 5.8 St. George earthquake. The geologic setting of the Magna earthquake is well documented by recent geologic mapping at 1:24,000 scale and 1:62,500 scale at and near the epicenter northeast of Magna, Utah. Subsurface fault modeling from surficial geologic mapping, structural cross sections, deep borehole data, and geophysical data reveals a complex system of faulting concentrated in the hanging wall of the Weber and Salt Lake City segments of the Wasatch fault zone including the Harkers fault, the West Valley fault zone, and the newly interpreted Saltair graben. Based on geologic and geophysical data (seismic and gravity), we interpret the mainshock of the Magna earthquake as having occurred on a relatively gently dipping part of the Salt Lake City segment, with aftershocks concentrated in the Saltair graben and West Valley fault zone. Postearthquake rapid reconnaissance of geological effects of the Magna earthquake documented liquefaction near the earthquake epicenter, along the Jordan River, and along the Great Salt Lake shoreline. Subaerial and subaqueous sand boils were identified in regions with roadway infrastructure and artificial fill, whereas collapse features were noted along the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Potential syneresis cracking and pooling in large areas indicated fluctuating groundwater likely related to earthquake ground shaking. The moderate magnitude of the Magna earthquake and minimal geological effects highlight the critical importance of earthquake research from multidisciplinary fields in the geosciences and preparedness on the Wasatch Front.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 132-134
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dombrosky

Review of Winds from the North: Tewa Origins and Historical Anthropology. Scott G. Ortman. 2012. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Pp. 520, 51 illustrations, 25 maps, 54 tables. $70.00 (hardcover). ISBN  978-1-60781-172-5.


Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Kunik ◽  
Derek V. Mallia ◽  
Kevin R. Gurney ◽  
Daniel L. Mendoza ◽  
Tomohiro Oda ◽  
...  

Top-down, data-driven models possess ample power to improve the accuracy of bottom-up carbon dioxide (CO2) emission inventories, and more work is needed to explore the merger of top-down and bottom-up estimates to better inform the metrics used to monitor global CO2 fluxes. Here we present a Bayesian inverse modeling framework over Salt Lake City, Utah, which utilizes available CO2 emission inventories to establish a synthetic data simulation aimed at exploring model uncertainties. Prescribing a high-resolution, urban-scale data product (Hestia) as the “true” emissions in the model, we combine prior emissions with an atmospheric transport model to derive modeled afternoon CO2 enhancements at six monitoring sites within the Salt Lake Valley during the month of September 2015. A global high-resolution gridded emissions data product (ODIAC) is used as the prior, and objective uncertainty structures are defined for both the a priori estimates and the transport model-data relationship which consider non-negligible spatial and temporal covariances. Optimized (posterior) emissions over the Salt Lake Valley agree closely with the assumed “true” emissions during afternoon times, while results including unconstrained times (e.g. night-time) lack such agreement. Both spatial and temporal correlations of prior errors were found to be necessary for obtaining a robust posterior estimate. Model sensitivity analyses are performed, which examine correlation length and time scales, model-data mismatch error, and measurement site network variability. Through these analyses, one measurement site is identified as being particularly prone to introducing bias into posterior emissions due to influences from a nearby point source. Increasing model-data mismatch error at this site is shown to reduce bias in the posterior without significantly compromising agreement with monthly averaged true emissions.


Author(s):  
Ivan Wong ◽  
Qimin Wu ◽  
James C. Pechmann

Abstract The 2020 oblique normal-faulting M 5.7 Magna mainshock has provided the best dataset of recorded strong ground motions for an earthquake within the Wasatch Front region, Utah, and the larger Basin and Range Province. We performed a preliminary evaluation of the strong motion and broadband data from this earthquake and compared the data with the Next Generation Attenuation - West2 Project (NGA-West2) ground-motion models (GMMs). The highest horizontal peak ground acceleration (PGA) recorded was 0.43g (geometric mean of the two horizontal components) at a station located above the rupture plane at a rupture distance of 8 km. Eleven stations recorded PGAs >0.20g. Most of these stations are located on the deep sedimentary deposits within the Salt Lake Valley, and all are at rupture distances <20  km. The data compare favorably with the NGA-West2 GMMs, although the expected variability was observed. PGAs exceed the GMM predictions at the closest distances for the source model that we used. The area of the strongest ground shaking encompassed the town of Magna, where some of the heaviest damage occurred. A significant implication of the 2020 Magna earthquake for seismic hazards in the Salt Lake Valley arises from the possibility that this earthquake occurred on the Salt Lake City segment of the Wasatch fault. If so, then the dip of this fault segment must decrease with depth to ≤30°–35°, as proposed by Pang et al. (2020)—at least along the northern part of the segment where the earthquake occurred. Because of the lack of information about the subsurface geometry of the Wasatch fault zone, modeling of this fault zone in seismic hazard analyses has assumed a moderate dip of 50°±15°. Assuming a more shallowly dipping fault results in higher estimates of ground shaking in future large earthquakes on this fault. Alternative interpretations of the Magna earthquake are that it occurred (1) on an auxiliary fault within the Wasatch fault zone or (2) on a listric section of the northern Salt Lake City segment that is not representative of the geometry of the whole fault segment.


1984 ◽  
Vol 89 (5) ◽  
pp. 1393
Author(s):  
James B. Allen ◽  
Brigham D. Madsen

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