Great Salt Lake, Lake Bonneville, & Bear Lake

Lake Bonneville

• Lake Bonneville StoryMap
  30,000 years of lake levels in the Bonneville basin
• Lake Bonneville Flood Animation
  Created by Aero-Graphics
• The Stockton Bar, a Geologic Treasure in Tooele County
  One of the largest and most well-preserved shoreline remnants of Lake Bonneville.
• The geologic story of GK Gilbert Geologic View Park
• Mammoth tusk discovery adds to our knowledge of life along the shores of Lake Bonneville
• Major levels of Great Salt Lake and Lake Bonneville (pdf)
  Map #73
• Commonly Asked Questions About Utah’s Great Salt Lake and Ancient Lake Bonneville
  Public Information Series #39
• Preguntas Comunes Acerca de Gran Lago Salado de Utah ye de Antiguo Lago Boneville (pdf)
  Public Information Series #86

Bear Lake

• Why is Bear Lake so blue? And other commonly asked questions (pdf)
  Public Information Series #96

While it is one of the oldest lakes in North America, Bear Lake is best known for its blue splendor. The water in Bear Lake is pristine, deep, and calcium-carbonate rich, giving it a blue appearance.
Bear Lake, Rich County, Utah Photographer: Nikki Simon; © 2015

Microbialites

Microbialites take several forms: thinly layered (stromatolites), clotted (thrombolites), spherical (oncolites), and precipitated from mineral-rich springs (tufa or travertine). Stromatolites are currently growing on the gently sloping floor of Great Salt Lake at shallow water depths where the blue-green algae receives sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis.

Click here for additional information on microbialites in Oil & Gas.

Poster: Characterization of Microbialites in Bridger Bay, Antelope Island, Great Salt Lake, Utah (pdf)
Michael D, Vanden Berg, Thomas C. Chidsey, Jr., Davis E. Eby, and Wayne Kelln
Presented at the International Limnogeology Congress 2015, June 15-19, Reno, NV.

Antelope Island Bioherm Flyover video on Multimedia
UGS geologist Michael Vanden Berg teamed up with individuals from Loma Linda University to fly a drone/GoPro over the microbialites/bioherms in the shallow waters of Great Salt Lake on the northwestern tip of Antelope Island.

Survey Notes Articles

Glad You Asked: Is There Coral in Great Salt Lake?
from Survey Notes, v. 44 no. 1, January 2012

Technical Publications

Great Salt Lake

• Mapping Groundwater Quality and Chemistry Adjacent to Great Salt Lake, Utah
  2019, Open File Report 699
• Great Salt Lake’s north arm salt crust
  2016, Report of Investigation 276
• Great Salt Lake brine chemistry database (xlsx)
• Great Salt Lake—an overview of change
  2002, Utah Department of Natural Resources Special Publication
• Shoreline superelevation: evidence of coastal processes of Great Salt Lake, Utah
  2006, Miscellaneous Publication 06-9
• Effects of breaching the Southern Pacific railroad causeway, Great Salt Lake, Utah—physical and chemical changes, August 1, 1984-July, 1986
  1987, Water Resources Bulletin 25
• Great Salt Lake—a scientific, historical, and economic overview
   1980, Bulletin 116

Lake Bonneville

• Juke Box trench – a valuable archive of late Pleistocene and Holocene stratigraphy in the Bonneville Basin, Utah
  2018 Miscellaneous Publication 18-1
• The Gilbert episode in the Great Salt Lake Basin, Utah
  2014 Miscellaneous Publication 14-3
• Geologic map of unconsolidated deposits in the Hogup Bar quadrangle, Box Elder County, Utah
  2015 Miscellaneous Publication 15-2
  (Instigated to better understand the development of transgressive shorelines in Lake Bonneville that developed during the late Pleistocene.)