The Paleohydrology Component of the Great Salt Lake Hydrologic Observatory GSLHO

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The Paleohydrology Component of the Great Salt
Lake Hydrologic Observatory (GSLHO)

• Katrina A. Moser

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Outline

• General questions
• What opportunities are there for
  paleoenvironmental research? (Locations)
• Methods
• What can we get from paleohydrology? (two
  examples)
• Existing infrastructure
• What do we need?
• How can we attract paleo people?

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What can paleohydrology provide?

• A long term perspective of changes in hydrology
  (water quantity, water quality)
• This provides an understanding of baseline
  conditions, the range of natural variability,
  trends, the point in time when a system began to
  change

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Time Scales
Smol, 2002
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Water Quantity

• What is the natural variability of drought/flood
  occurrence?
• How has the frequency, magnitude and duration of
  drought/flood changed overtime?
• What causes drought?
• How do changes in effective moisture (P-E) affect
  our understanding of the hydrologic system
  overtime? (Climate Change)

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Water Quality

• Have pollutants (e.g., Se, N, Pb, etc.) to lakes
  changed overtime? If so, by how much?
• How have landscape changes impacted water
  quality?
• What is the spatial variability of temporal
  changes in water quality?
• If there are changes are they impacting the
  aquatic ecosystems? (biologic indicators i.e.,
  diatoms, chironomids)
• Are some systems more susceptible to pollution
  than others? (i.e., high elevation vs low
  elevation? reservoirs vs natural lakes)
• Can aquatic systems recover over time?

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What tools do we have to look at paleohydrology?

• Historical measurements
• Space-for-time substitution
• Modelling
• Paleoenvironmental lake sediments, tree rings

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Where?
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Alpine Lakes (Uintas) (annual,
Holocene) climate pollution
Reservoirs (annual to decadal, 1900s)
pollution climate???
Great Salt Lake (100-1000 resolution, million
years) climate pollution
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What is Paleolimnology?
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Dating Lake Sediments

• Age Equivalence
• Pollen
• Paleomagnetics
• Tephrachronology
• Radiometric/Chemical
• 210Pb
• 137Cs
• 14C
• U-series
• Amino-acid racemization

• Incremental
• varves

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From the Aquatic System..
8 microns
2 microns
Chrysophytes
25 microns
Diatoms
1 micron
Zeeb and Smol, 2001
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From the Aquatic System..
Heterotrissocladius grimshawi type
Sergentia
Chironomids
Photo Source http//www.ouc.bc.ca/eesc/iwalker/w
wwguide/index.html
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From the Terrestrial System.
Pollen (http//www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/)
10um
Charcoal
Stomate (30um)
Sediment Particles (0.1mm)
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From the Atmopshere..
SCPs from Oil Burning (Rose, 2001)
IASs from Coal Burning (Rose, 2001)
Isotopes, Metals
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Paleolimnological Approach
Moser, in press
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Lake Depth and Salinity Proxies of Effective
Moisture
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Devils Lake, North Dakota
Fritz et al., 1990
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SN Study Site

• 57 study lakes
• generally small
• (1-10 ha)
• varying depths
• (2- 40 m)
• generally ultra-oligotrophic to oligotrophic
• circum-neutral
• span an altitudinal range of 1360 m a.s.l.

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High Elevation Site
Mid Elevation Site
Low Elevation Site
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Best Salinity Models from Diatom Data
Bloom et al., 2003
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So we launched a multi-proxy study using pollen,
stomata, chironomids, diatoms, stable isotopes
and other indicators -
Lake coring
Kirman Lake
Sample extraction
. Surface sample lakes
Surface sampling
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Kirman Lake
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Collecting Long Cores
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Kirman Lake
Bloom et al., in prep
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Kirman Lake
Bloom et al., in prep
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Age Calendar Years B.P.
Lake Depth
El Nino Events Moy et al., 2002
Bioturbation Index (Behl et al., 1996)
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The Uinta Mountains
NSF 04-07
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Varved Sediments and Tree Rings El Nino, PDO and
others
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Have Uinta Mountain Lakes Been Impacted by
Atmospheric Pollution?
http//www.people.virginia.edu/ggg9y/geneva.jpg
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Locations of Marshall, Hidden, Hoover, and Water
Lilly Lakes
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Hidden Lake Water Lilly Lake
Marshall Lake Hoover Lake
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1988
1945
1945
1865
1865
14C 1690
14C 4380
Cu, Ag, Cd, Pb and As show 2-20X increases
from background levels
1945
1865
14C 2500
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Existing Infrastructure

• Environmental Change Observatory (ECO), Kennecott
• Facilities available to work on cores
• General processing (pollen, diatoms, charcoal,
  LOI, basic sediments)
• Magnetic susceptibility
• Several high quality microscopes, diatom
  literature, pollen collection
• Ability to core small lakes short cores and
  long cores
• Cold room for core storage
• Uinta calibration set
• On Campus
• Stable isotopes
• Chemical analyses of sediment and water samples
• Coring (Dennis Neilson)
• SEM
• Off Campus
• USGS
• - Minnesota

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What we need?

• Cold room for working on frozen cores
• Better facilities for core logging
• Biogenic silica (BSi) NAU - Kaufman
• Tree ring facilities (Colorado, Arizona)
• Coring equipment and field gear lack ability to
  core deep reservoirs
• Technical assistance processing etc.

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What might attract paleo people?

• Facilities ease to access many paleo tools
  this needs improvements
• The availability of modern data allows for
  testing of methods and improvement of methods
  (ACID RAIN example)
• Opportunity to work with modern process people