Weihong Wang

Utah Valley University | UVU · Department of Earth Science

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted scientific research, teaching, and learning in higher education and forced many institutions to explore new modalities in response to the abrupt shift to remote learning. Accordingly, many colleges and universities struggled to provide the training, technology, and best practices to support faculty and students, espe...

Utah Lake is one of the largest freshwater bodies in the West and a valuable resource for agricultural and recreational activities in the region. However, it has suffered elevated trace metal and nutrient levels since the pioneer settlement in 1847. The objectives of this project were as follows: (1) investigate the temporal and spatial variations...

The concepts of resistance, recovery, and resilience are in diverse fields from behavioral psychology to planetary ecology. These “three Rs” describe some of the most important properties allowing complex systems to survive in dynamic environments. However, in many fields—including ecology—our ability to predict resistance, recovery and resilience...

This booklet describes the past, present, and potential future of Utah Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Utah. This keystone ecosystem is a crucial link in the Pacific Flyway, an island of water in the arid Great Basin, and also at the center of one of the fastest-growing metropolitan regions of the United States. Understanding Utah Lake has nev...

Utah Lake is a huge and unique waterbody at the heart of Utah Valley. Though it is one of the largest freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi River, many in our community know little about its history, ecology, and importance to our future. As the population of our valley grows, we need to understand Utah Lake so we can preserve and protect this k...

To investigate the hydrology of Utah Lake, we analyzed the hydrogen (δ2H) and oxygen (δ18O) stable isotope composition of water samples collected from the various components of its system. The average δ2H and δ18O values of the inlets are similar to the average values of groundwater, which in turn has a composition that is similar to winter precipi...

Lakes serve as an organic matter sink and archive past environmental conditions and biogeochemical processes. Stable isotope analyses (δ13C and δ15N), and trace metal records in sediment cores have been used to reconstruct past environmental changes in aquatic ecosystems. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the origin of historic organic ma...

Utah Lake has long been considered severely polluted and undesirable for recreation. This is largely due to the fact that Utah Lake has received heavy loadings of various pollutants related to anthropogenic activities. In this project, we collected quarterly water and floc layer sediment samples from the Utah Lake inlets and outlet, and Utah Lake a...

The Gold King Mine spill occurred August 5 th 2015 in Silverton Colorado, contaminating the Animas River, which feeds to the San Juan River and ultimately the Colorado River and Lake Powell. The spill released many harmful trace metals in to the river including metals such as arsenic, cadmium, and mercury. The effects of these contaminants in the w...

Conclusion In conclusion there are some very promising areas for geothermal development that have not been traditionally looked at. Figure 4 shows a new area of particular interest in north central Utah located in the area of Spanish Fork Canyon. This area is also the location of a recently closed coal fired power plant as well as close proximity t...