Great Salt Lake, and precursors, Utah: The last 30,000 years

Spencer, Ronald J.; Baedecker, Mary Jo; Eügster, Hans P.; Forester, Richard M.; Goldhaber, Martin B.; Jones, Blair F.; Kelts, Kerry; McKenzie, Judith A.; Madsen, David B.; Rettig, S.L.; Rubin, Meyer; Bowser, Carl J.

doi:10.1007/bf01187137

Cited by 152 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…With the lake's rapid retreat ca. 13,500-12,000 y BP (8,15), the cave became an owl roost site (14,16). Owls regurgitate pellets that include the undigested bones of their small-mammal prey.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Global climate was inferred by the δ 18 O record of the North Greenland Ice Core Project (18). Regional habitats in the Bonneville Basin were inferred from a Great Salt Lake pollen core (15), expressed as the percentage of xeric pollen taxa (Chenopodiaceae-Amaranthus+Sarcobatus+Ambrosia-type Asteraceae) (14). We used a radiocarbon-calibrated linear age model to reconstruct the chronology of this pollen core based on age estimates provided by Thompson et al (49).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Terry

Rowe

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Research on the ecological impacts of environmental change has primarily focused at the species level, leaving the responses of ecosystem-level properties like energy flow poorly understood. This is especially so over millennial timescales inaccessible to direct observation. Here we examine how energy flow within a Great Basin small mammal community responded to climate-driven environmental change during the past 12,800 y, and use this baseline to evaluate responses observed during the past century. Our analyses reveal marked stability in energy flow during rapid climatic warming at the terminal Pleistocene despite dramatic turnover in the distribution of mammalian body sizes and habitat-associated functional groups. Functional group turnover was strongly correlated with climatedriven changes in regional vegetation, with climate and vegetation change preceding energetic shifts in the small mammal community. In contrast, the past century has witnessed a substantial reduction in energy flow caused by an increase in energetic dominance of smallbodied species with an affinity for closed grass habitats. This suggests that modern changes in land cover caused by anthropogenic activities-particularly the spread of nonnative annual grasslandshas led to a breakdown in the compensatory dynamics of energy flow. Human activities are thus modifying the small mammal community in ways that differ from climate-driven expectations, resulting in an energetically novel ecosystem. Our study illustrates the need to integrate across ecological and temporal scales to provide robust insights for long-term conservation and management.paleoecology | Quaternary | desert rodents | body size | invasive grass T he chronic and cumulative anthropogenic impacts of the past century have spurred considerable shifts in climates and habitats over local to global scales. Efforts to understand ecological responses to these changes have largely been focused at the species level (e.g., range shifts) over annual to decadal timescales. However, climate and habitat change impact biotas across all levels of ecological organization, from individuals to entire ecosystems. Furthermore, many ecological processes unfold over timescales inaccessible to direct observation or experimentation (1). Evaluating the response of higher-level aggregate properties (e.g., energy flow) to environmental change across centennial to millennial timescales can thus provide the temporal context needed to assess whether modern systems now fall within or outside their natural range of variability.Emphasis on species-level responses to environmental change is rooted in the paradigm that populations are highly dynamic while the aggregate properties of a community remain relatively stable and are thus more robust to perturbation. Aggregate properties have been shown to reflect resource availability (2, 3), and their stability has often been attributed to compensatory dynamics among individual species or functional groups (4). However, recent work has shown that marked change in aggrega...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Terry

Rowe

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…This result, although surprising at first sight, is indeed to be expected because of the salinity effect on the isotopic buildup in a terminal lake (Gat 1984), which was discussed previously. On the other hand, Spencer et al (1984) found an opposite effect in carbonates deposited from the precursors of Great Salt Lake (Utah), namely a freshening of approximately 5%0 in 1518 in the Pleistocene lake. It appears that this system changed from a terminal lake into a flushed lake, so that the through-flow pattern overcame the effect of salinity on the isotopic buildup.…”

Section: Isotopic Paleolimnologymentioning

confidence: 96%

Stable Isotopes of Fresh and Saline Lakes

Gat¹

1995

Physics and Chemistry of Lakes

168

157

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“…Lake sediments of Miocene age have been identified in the basin, both in deep cores from the basin center and in outcrops of faulted offshore sediments on the basin margins (Miller 1991). Most previous work on the lacustrine history of the basin has focused on the late Pleistocene (Gilbert 1890;Scott et al 1983;Spencer et al 1984;Oviatt et al 1992), but older Pleistocene lakes have also been investigated (Kowalewska and Cohen 1998;Balch et al 2005).…”

Section: Hydrologic History Of the Basinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geochemical Evolution of Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA

et al. 2008

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The Great Salt Lake (GSL) of Utah, USA, is the largest saline lake in North America, and its brines are some of the most concentrated anywhere in the world. The lake occupies a closed basin system whose chemistry reflects solute inputs from the weathering of a diverse suite of rocks in its drainage basin. GSL is the remnant of a much larger lacustrine body, Lake Bonneville, and it has a long history of carbonate deposition. Inflow to the lake is from three major rivers that drain mountain ranges to the east and empty into the southern arm of the lake, from precipitation directly on the lake, and from minor groundwater inflow. Outflow is by evaporation. The greatest solute inputs are from calcium bicarbonate river waters mixed with sodium chloride-type springs and groundwaters. Prior to 1930 the lake concentration inversely tracked lake volume, which reflected climatic variation in the drainage, but since then salt precipitation and re-solution, primarily halite and mirabilite, have periodically modified lake-brine chemistry through density stratification and compositional differentiation. In addition, construction of a railway causeway has restricted circulation, nearly isolating the northern from the southern part of the lake, leading to halite precipitation in the north. These and other conditions have created brine differentiation, mixing, and fractional precipitation of salts as major factors in solute evolution. Pore fluids and diagenetic reactions have been identified as important sources and especially sinks for CaCO 3 , Mg, and K in the lake, depending on the concentration gradient and clays.

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Great Salt Lake, and precursors, Utah: The last 30,000 years

Cited by 152 publications

References 23 publications

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Stable Isotopes of Fresh and Saline Lakes

Geochemical Evolution of Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA

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