PP13B-2280
An Investigation of Transgressive Deposits in Late Pleistocene Lake Bonneville using GPR and UAV-produced DEMs.
Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Katherine Schide1, Paul W Jewell1, Charles G Oviatt2 and Harry M Jol3, (1)University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, (2)Kansas State Univ, Manhattan, KS, United States, (3)University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI, United States
Abstract:
Lake Bonneville was the largest of the Pleistocene pluvial lakes that once filled the Great Basin of the interior western United States. Its two most prominent shorelines, Bonneville and Provo, are well documented but many of the lake’s intermediate shoreline features have yet to be studied. These transgressive barriers and embankments mark short-term changes in the regional water budget and thus represent a proxy for local climate change. The internal and external structures of these features are analyzed using the following methods: ground penetrating radar, 5 meter auto-correlated DEMs, 1-meter DEMs generated from LiDAR, high-accuracy handheld GPS, and 3D imagery collected with an unmanned aerial vehicle. These methods in mapping, surveying, and imaging provide a quantitative analysis of regional sediment availability, transportation, and deposition as well as changes in wave and wind energy. These controls help define climate thresholds and rates of landscape evolution in the Great Basin during the Pleistocene that are then evaluated in the context of global climate change.
