(ESH) Collaborative Research: Relationship Between Global Climate Change and Lake Bonneville Fluctuations: Analysis of Sediment Cores from the Great Salt Lake, Utah

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9631363 Roberts An important aspect of global climate change studies, that is lagging behind studies of marine environments, is the study of climate change in continental interiors. Such studies are clearly necessary in order to understand the effects of changes in atmospheric dynamics on the climate system. Large inland lakes provide an excellent source for such studies because they sensitively record significant changes in inflow which are usually controlled by changes in atmospheric dynamics. Preliminary data strongly suggest that global climate change phenomena are responsible for lake-level fluctuations in the Great Salt Lake in the period between about 21 and 10 ka. Less is known about the Holocene history, although there are some suggestions that the Great Salt Lake also responded to global-scale climate changes during this interval. We propose to produce a complete and well-dated reconstruction of lake-level changes for the last 40 ka in the Bonneville basin through study of sediment cores from Great Sale Lake and by integrating the new results with previous work in the basin. This work will test the hypothesis that late Pleistocene lake sediments in the Bonneville basin provide a regional response record of atmospheric dynamics associated with global climate change. This work will also provide the basis for paleoenvironmental reconstructions in future studies of older, less well-known, Bonneville basin lake cycles. This project represents a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration between Jack Oviatt (Kansas State University - Physical stratigraphy), Andrew Roberts (University of Minnesota - Stable isotope stratigraphy, and U.S.G.S. personnel (including Bob Thompson - pollen; Blair Jones - clay mineralogy; Rick Forrester - ostracodes). ??