Abstract
Farmington Bay (FB), UT, has undergone major water quality changes due to human interventions. An arm of the Great Salt Lake (GSL), FB, is an endorheic body, actively accumulating nutrients. Human impacts to FB began in 1847 when European settlers arrived and major ecosystem changes have resulted through local development. Major impacts include anthropogenically impacted discharges (AID), causeway construction, and water-level declines. AID includes raw and treated sewage, septic leachate, irrigation returns, and feedlot or pasture runoff. Causeway construction produced freshening (hypersaline to fresh-brackish) via hydrodynamic isolation, whereas diversions and a drying climate prevent AID from mixing with the rest of the GSL. The timing of human interventions is known, allowing identification of ecosystem response in three sediment cores analyzed for 210Pb chronology, mineralogy, C and N isotopes, pyrolysis, porewater chemistry, and diatom stratigraphy. From these proxies, three events have profoundly altered FB. A sewage canal (1911) brought raw effluent from Salt Lake City, causing a rise in the d15N of organic matter (OM). A corresponding increase in carbonate production occurred as enhanced productivity led to higher pH. Causeway construction (1969) spurred algal growth as FB freshened. Declining water levels (> 1990) resulted in a shrinking volume of bay water, resulting in increased eutrophication. P is elevated in porewater due to OM decay. ~ 0.9 gm−2 year−1 phosphate is released to the water column, compared to an estimated 3.0 gm−2 year−1 surface inflow loading. Although ecosystem improvements may result from AID reductions, improvements in water quality are most easily achieved by restoring surface inflows to FB.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. However, some files (X-ray diffraction) may require the use of proprietary software in order to display and reduce data. Production of this study was enabled commonly available computer codes, except for Rietveld refinements of mineral abundances employing Rigaku PDXL2 software. The Central Davis and South Davis Wastewater Districts also provided important logistical support.
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This study was funded by the Wasatch Front Water Quality Council, of which co-authors Leland Myers and Theron Miller are members.
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Gunnell, N., Nelson, S., Rushforth, S. et al. From Hypersaline to Fresh-Brackish: Documenting the Impacts of Human Intervention on a Natural Water Body from Cores, Farmington Bay, UT, USA. Water Air Soil Pollut 233, 35 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-022-05507-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-022-05507-x