LABS
The Center for Natural and Technological Hazards (CNTH)
We focus on developing knowledge and a new generation of diverse scientists to promote justice and equity in reducing harm from hazards, risks, and disasters.
Our Mission:
We are dedicated to enhancing the societal benefits of hazards research and student training by:
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Producing knowledge about social and geographic inequities in vulnerability to hazards and disasters
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Clarifying inequities in vulnerability associated with phyiscal exposure, mitigation, preparedness, response, health outcomes, and recovery
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Informing practical interventions to reduce inequities in vulnerability to hazards and disasters
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Mentoring undergraduate students, graduate students and early career faculty to conduct high-quality research on hazards and disasters
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Building an inclusive and diverse community of hazards and disasters scholars
DIGIT LAB
Established in 1987 by Brian Haslam, the DIGIT Lab is an auxiliary facility of the University of Utah Department of Geography.
We operate within the University's research infrastructure to provide support for both theoretical and applied geographic information analysis and application development. Our goal is to offer students real world experience, and at the same time, deliver the highest quality of geographic information services.
The DIGIT Lab also supports faculty research in the Department of Geography as well as other departments at the University of Utah. The DIGIT Lab has worked for (or with) more than twenty different departments across campus.
HATER Lab - Hate, Aggression, Terror, & Extremism Research
The University of Utah Hate, Aggression, Terror, and Extremism Research (HATER) Lab is composed of faculty and students with research interests in all aspects of bias and conflict. We apply qualitative and quantitative research methods to problems including hate crimes and organized hate, social issues and inequalities, radicalization processes, and political violence.
Power Paleoecology Lab
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The RED Lab - Records of Environment & Disturbance
The University of Utah RED (Records of Environment and Disturbance) Lab was founded in 2003 in the Kennecott Building on the University of Utah campus. The RED Lab was temporarily relocated to new space in Research Park in 2013 but moved into the new, collaborative lab in Gardner Commons (5th floor) in fall of 2018. Research in the RED Lab focuses on reconstructions of past environments with a strong emphasis on studies that contain management applications or are collaborative with archaeological research. Projects include reconstructions of fire and vegetation regimes from the western U.S., Mexico, and Central and South America, past bark beetle outbreaks in the mountain west, desert wetlands (ciénegas), and human paleoecology.
SPARC Lab
Urban & Sustainability Research Lab (USRL)
The Urban and Sustainability Research Lab has a broad coverage, including urbanization, development, inequality, health, land use, and sustainability, with an extensive use of GIS spatial analysis. Projects include Comparative Regional Inequality Dynamics (National Science Foundation), Reducing VMT, Encouraging Walk Trips, and Facilitating Efficient Trip Chains through Polycentric Development (National Institute for Transportation & Communities), Urban Housing and Land and Their Implications for Inequality under the Process of Urbanization in China (Ford Foundation), and Amenity, Neighborhood and Spatial Inequality (University of Utah). We’ve also been working on amenity, pollution, housing prices, physical activity, and health in Utah.
Utah Geo-Health Lab (UGHL)
The Utah Geo-Health Lab was established in 2014. Research of the lab focuses on using GIS and spatial methods to investigate public health and environmental health problems. Current projects of the lab include smartphone-based mobility study, access to healthcare, neighborhood context analysis of health behaviors, GIS-assisted air pollution exposure modeling, health consequences of agricultural pesticides exposure, and health disparities. Details of these projects are below.
Utah Radon Lab
To better understand the role of radon in Utah schools, a team of researchers from the University of Utah and Brigham Young University have joined forces to study this phenomenon. The goal of this research partnership is to test schools in seven districts in Utah to identify their current radon levels and general building characteristics. This team will also identify the best practices when testing schools for radon. Based on this data collection, the team will look for building characteristics associated with elevated radon, assess schools for elevated radon, and propose a testing protocol for state decision-makers and legislators to prevent future exposures in school populations in Utah.
Utah Remote Sensing Applications Lab (URSA)
The Utah Remote Sensing Applications (URSA) Lab uses remote sensing data acquired from satellites, aircraft, and drones to explore applications solving real-world problems. We use data from a variety of different sensors, including hyperspectral, lidar, multispectral, and thermal infrared, to measure and map the Earth’s surface. We combine remote sensing with GIS to provide powerful tools to monitor changes in vegetation caused by drought and disturbance, assess wildland firefighter safety, and measure greenhouse gas plumes. For more details on our current work, see Projects.
The URSA Lab is affiliated with the Department of Geography and the Global Change and Sustainability Center at the University of Utah.
Affiliate Labs
Garrett Herbarium
Herbarium collections are places where dried and preserved plant specimens are stored and used as references as well as for research and education purposes. Basically, herbaria are libraries of plants! The typical herbarium specimen is pressed flat and glued to archival paper along with a label that has detailed information about the specimen (e.g. what it is, when and where it was collected and by whom, and a description of the habitat it was found in.) These flat specimens comprise the bulk of our collections (~140,000 and growing). Our collections focus on the Intermountain West region, but are global in scope.
Global Change & Sustainability Center (GCSC)
The Global Change & Sustainability Center coordinates, promotes, and accelerates interdisciplinary research and training on natural and human-built systems, the dynamic interactions and interconnections that exist in those systems, and the role of humans in the environment.
Global Paleofire Working Group (GPWG)
Destructive wildfires in 2019 and 2020 in the Mediterranean, Indonesia, Amazon-rainforest, Austrailia, western North America, and in the boreal regions received worldwide media attention, raising debates about the causes and risks associated with wildfire disturbance and changing fire regimes. Fire is a key process for ecosystem function, and a critical process in carbon cycling and radiative forcing. The need for enhanced emergency planning is growing, as changes in climate alter landscape disturbaces. In response, governments and policy makers seek to increase capacity within wildland fire science, and in so doing increase national-scale preparedness. Examples of important research topics include wildfire risk assessment and reduction, climate change and socioeconomic vulnerabilities, improving wildfire information systems, smoke monitoring, modeling wildfire growth and behavior, community protection, and recognition of Indigenous fire knowledge. Paleoenvironmental data can provide insight into ecosystem and disturbance regime change as well as aid the development of ecosystem and climate models. Given that future changes in climate are projected to be of similar (or greater) magnitude to those of the Holocene, paleoenvironmental studies can also directly inform about responses to changes in climate.
Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU)
The Natural History Museum of Utah is the state's official museum of natural history. Nestled in the foothills above Salt Lake City, the Museum's home—the Rio Tinto Center—is an architectural wonder that houses 163,000 square feet of breathtaking exhibitions exploring billions of years of natural history. Explore more below to see the many ways you can experience the Museum and all it holds.
Range Creek Canyon
The Range Creek Field Station, was established in 2009, for the scientific investigation, preservation, and protection of the incredible archaeological resources found there. The field station is managed by the Natural History Museum of Utah. The Range Creek Field Station includes ~3,000 acres of state land along the bottom of the canyon, surrounded by nearly 50,000 acres of BLM wilderness land. The area houses hundreds of archaeological sites, providing evidence of the people who occupied this canyon over the last 1,500 years. The restricted access to the area over the last 100 years has kept these sites in near pristine condition. Archaeologists at the museum collaborate with their colleagues from the University of Utah Departments of Anthropology, Geography, and others, to form a multidisciplinary coalition of researchers, educators, and individuals investigating the natural and human history of this remarkable place.
Bonderman Field Station
Bonderman Field Station at Rio Mesa (formerly known as Rio Mesa Center) is an outdoor laboratory for the sciences, humanities, social sciences and cultural studies, stimulating scholarship about a broad range of environmental topics associated with human and natural system interactions. After leasing the approximately 400-acre property for several years, the University of Utah took ownership in late 2015, thanks to the generous property donation by Mr. David Bonderman.
The station supports research, education, and other academic pursuits that aid in our understanding or appreciation of ecology, the environment, and human-environment interactions. Our mission is to promote and inspire environmental scholarship on the Colorado Plateau.
Sustainabilty Office
The University of Utah defines sustainability as the integrated pursuit of social equity, environmental integrity, and economic security for current and future generations. It created the Sustainability Office in fall 2007 to move campus toward this holistic view of sustainability.
MISSION: Integrate sustainability as a core principle throughout operations, research, and education at the University of Utah and to support initiatives that cultivate the campus as a living laboratory.
VISION: Create a culture of responsibility by integrating the values of sustainability in all facets of the University of Utah and to serve as a model for what is possible.
Think Globally Learn Locally (TGLL)
Think Globally, Learn Locally (TGLL) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) G-12K program administered through the Department of Biology at the University of Utah. This program pairs graduate students from the hard science with secondary teachers in the Salt Lake City School District. Throughout the course of a year the fellows work in the classroom of their teacher co-teaching, leading hands-on labs, and conducting in-the-field field trips around the valley.