The CWC Releases the Environmental Dashboard

The Central Wasatch Commission released the Environmental Dashboard to the public on Monday, June 6th. The public may access the Environmental Dashboard at this link: https://cwc.utah.gov/environmental-dashboard/

The Environmental Dashboard is a tool for the public, land managers, policy makers and technical users to learn about the historic and current environmental conditions of the Central Wasatch. The Dashboard contains five environmental elements: air quality and climate, geology and soil, vegetation communities, water, and wildlife, and existing data for each element has been gathered and presented for public access. The boundaries for this environmental dashboard project are based on naturally occurring hydrologic units (or drainage areas) and are independent of the Central Wasatch Commission’s jurisdictional boundary.

Chair of the Central Wasatch Commission, Christopher F. Robinson remarked on the release of the Environmental Dashboard, “It is the goal of the Central Wasatch Commission that the Environmental Dashboard is an educational tool that is utilized by everyone, ranging from school-aged children to policymakers and scientific researchers. The Dashboard provides a centralized location for decades of data for water, air, soil, wildlife, and vegetation in the Central Wasatch. We have worked to make that data accessible and are proud to release it to the public for use. It is the culmination of nearly seven years of work on the project.”

The Environmental Dashboard is a project that originated in 2015 under Mountain Accord. It was originally scoped to be a paper report geared towards an expert audience. What has been released now is a dynamic online tool that is interactive and may be used by people ranging from school-aged children to technical experts. The Dashboard will also be updated with new information as necessary, and new data as it becomes available, making the Environmental Dashboard an ever relevant and accurate resource.

The CWC Environmental Dashboard project objectives are to:

· provide an adaptable digital product, that can evolve with new information over time,

· add a public involvement component, and

· establish a broad spectrum of users as the audience for the Environmental Dashboard

The public have been invited to engage in the Environmental Dashboard build-out process. In April, The Central Wasatch Commission released a beta version of the Environmental Dashboard and opened an accompanying public comment period. The CWC also hosted two open houses during which attendees were invited to explore the Dashboard and provide CWC staff and the Dashboard developers critical feedback. That public feedback has been implemented into the final version of the Environmental Dashboard, where appropriate.

Starting in December 2022, the build-out process for an additional Environmental Dashboard will begin. The Dashboard project team will begin to implement the data collected from the Central Wasatch Commission’s Visitor Use Study to form a “human” element for the Dashboard that presents visitation data and the associated impacts to the ecologies of the Environmental Wasatch. The Visitor-Use Study is projected to reach completion in December 2022.

The public may access the Environmental Dashboard at this link: https://cwc.utah.gov/environmental-dashboard/

Please note: the data and information displayed on the Dashboard have been collected and assembled by various federal, state, and local governmental agencies other than the Central Wasatch Commission. The CWC’s purpose in providing this Dashboard is to make such information available to the public in a free, centralized location.