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nr:<;'O"3 V.J...) -,' INTRODUCTION Reoean:b program obJoctlve This is the second report of a project funded by the State of Utah for the purpose of examining water reuse and salvage potentials in Utah. The objective of the overall research program is to quantify the potential for extending and augment- ing Utah's water supplies by such possibilities as evaporation suppression and phreatophyte control. The initial report (Volume I) included two principal types of information: I. An inventory of all bodies of water in the state and an estimate of the average evap- oration from each of them. 2. A model for estimating the potentia' for evaporation suppression by the mono. layer film concept and the results of appli- cation of this model to all impoundments in Utah. The original intent of the project leader was to devote approximately half of the 2-year project effort to evaporation inventory and suppression pOlential and the balance to phreatophyte inven- tory and control. This plan was revised for the following reasons: I. During the latter part of the work on the monolayer concept, the research team became aware of a previously unresearched innovation in evaporation suppression technology which might have very important potential in Utah. The idea is thermal mixing of impoundments as a means of decreasing evaporation. 2. A significant amount of effort w~s devoted to gathering the results of existing phreatophyte acreage inventories for various basins in Utah. The Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) has developed and published detailed water related land use inventories for several Utah river basins, but these are limited essentially to the north half of the state. The UWRL phreatophyte classification consists of four categories which are related to consumptive use of water rather than identification of the particular specie of plant. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service (SCS) com pleted a statewide inventory of phreatophytes in Utah during 1974 in connection with the Westwide Planning Program. This inventory includes 10 categories which identify actual plant species and in some cases depth to water table. This type of inventory has desirable features in regard to later use of the inventory for management alternatives (which may differ according to plant specie, not consumplion). The SCS inventory also had the important advantage of essentially covering the entire state. Analysis of the unpublished SCS inventory showed that it is quite detailed and accurate in some areas such as the Sevier Basin where previous detailed studies were the basis for the inventory. However. in many basins the limited time and funds available to this inventory required use of judgment estimates of acreages by county person- nel rather than identification of each specie on aerie' photos and subsequent planimetering of the acreages. An attempt was made to reconcile the two inventories in northern basin so that the UWRL acreages could be converted to the SCS category types. This resulted in an extremely difficult task because of the different system of subbasin boundaries used by lhe two agencies and because of the obviously large discrepancies between the two inventories caused by differences in phreatophyte definitions and different methods of determining acreages. It became apparent that the most cost effective use of the existing balance of project funds would be to produce a thorough analysis of the destratification concept potential and to delay the phreatophyte control study until future funding at an increased level can be made available to continue the water salvage research program in this important area. Scope of this report The objective of this report is to determine the evaporation suppression potential of the destrati- fication concept in Utah. This requires a 1