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<br />7. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS <br /> <br />., <br /> <br />7.1 Overview <br /> <br />Summarized results of the final several years of the NOAAlUtah AMP program, conducted on central <br />Utah's Wasatch Plateau from early 1990 through early 1996, are presented in this report. Considerable <br />earlier work accomplished on the Tushar Mountains of southern Utah has been presented elsewhere. <br /> <br />The main goals ofthe NOAAlUtah AMP have been to investigate the effectiveness of the Utah winter <br />operational (applied) cloud seeding program and to recommend ways to improve that program's <br />effectiveness. Findings and recommendations have been reported to the NOAA AMP and to the Utah <br />Division of Water Resources. The latter agency partially sponsored the operational program in <br />cooperation with local water user groups. The operational program sponsors have the decision making <br />authority concerning implementation of any of the suggested changes. <br /> <br />Findings and recommendations have been provided in various levels of detail. A less detailed overview is <br />given within this and previous sections of this report. More detail is provided in section 8, to follow. The <br />reader is referred to the original 29 articles and conference papers- summarized in section 8 for complete <br />discussions of the various investigations. Finally, for anyone interested in greater detail, various <br />contractor reports and field operation plans exist which are not listed herein. <br /> <br />7.2 Key Physical Questions <br /> <br />The NOAAlUtah AMP did not pursue statistical evaluations of the operatioIlal seeding program because <br />of the many difficulties and uncertainties involved with such analyses as referred to in section 1. Rather, <br />the NOAAlUtah AMP used physical observations and reasoning, including sophisticated numerical <br />modeling, to investigate the key processes involved in winter orographic cloud seeding aimed at snowfall <br />augmentation. The key physical questions involved in evaluation of such seeding can be briefly stated as <br />follows: <br /> <br />1. When, where, and in what quantities does SL W exist within orographic clouds in excess to that <br />naturally converted to mountain snowfall? <br /> <br />2. When, where, and in what quantities does the seeding agent affect the SL W cloud, converting <br />portions of it to embryonic ice particles? In Utah, the operational seeding agent has been AgI <br />produced by valley generators using the acetone-silver iodide-ammonium iodide solution. <br /> <br />3. When, where, and in what quantities do the seeded ice crystals grow to snowflake sizes and fall to <br />the mountain surfaces? <br /> <br />Most of the investigations reported during the NOAAlUtah AMP addressed one of more of the above <br />questions. <br /> <br />29 <br />