Tag Archive for: Great Salt Lake

Utah Geological Survey

POTD September 10, 2013: Spiral Jetty in Great Salt Lake near Promontory Point, Box Elder County, Utah

Spiral Jetty in Great Salt Lake near Promontory Point, Box Elder County, Utah
Photographer: Don Clark

Great Salt Lake is likely best known for its high salinity and large size. Yet this unique lake also supports mineral and brine-shrimp industries,  provides a resting place for millions of migratory birds, and reveals varied spectacular sights. Sunsets over distant islands, white beaches, and water colors ranging from blue to pink offer inspiration for artists.

Boulders of basalt, now salt-encrusted, were moved from shore by artist Robert Smithson to create Spiral Jetty in Great Salt Lake near Promontory Point, Box Elder County.

Utah Geological Survey

POTD September 9, 2013: Great Salt Lake, Utah

Great Salt Lake, Utah
Photographer: Carole McCalla

Great Salt Lake is likely best known for its high salinity and large size. Yet this unique lake also supports mineral and brine-shrimp industries, provides a resting place for millions of migratory birds, and reveals varied spectacular sights. Sunsets over distant islands, white beaches, and water colors ranging from blue to pink offer inspiration for artists.

White foam, caused by wave action from windstorms, occasionally piles up along the shores of Great Salt Lake.

Utah Geological Survey

POTD September 6, 2013: Great Salt Lake, Davis County, Utah

Great Salt Lake, Davis County, Utah
Photographer: Carole McCalla

Antelope Island, approximately ten miles long and four miles wide, is the largest island in Great Salt Lake. The island, which becomes a peninsula when lake levels are low, has easily accessible outcrops of some of the oldest (Precambrian-aged) rocks in Utah. It is also home to a variety of wildlife including pronghorn, bison, bighorn sheep, and millions of waterfowl.

Utah Geological Survey

Bioherms in the Great Salt Lake

Great Salt Lake is a modern hypersaline lake and a remnant of freshwater Pleistocene Lake Bonneville.  It serves as a modern analogue to the Uinta Basin’s lacustrine Green River Formation and lacustrine microbial formations worldwide, including several recent very large oil discoveries in the deepwater offshore Brazil (pre-salt Santos Basin and others).  Actively forming microbial stromatolites, pustular thrombolites, and tufa deposits are found within the lake and along its shores.  Beaches and nearby dunes consist of abundant associated hypersaline ooids, coated grains, peloids, and rip-up clasts.

Recently, a few geologists from the UGS traveled to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake to investigate the modern microbial carbonates (i.e., bioherms) first hand.  The most convenient place to see the bioherms is in Bridger Bay on the northwest side of the island.  The bioherms live in roughly 1 to 3 feet of water, of course this will depend on overall lake level elevation.  Now is a good time to see these unique structures as the lake level is quite low.

Geologists from around the world have traveled to Utah to see these modern bioherms and relate their depositional environment back to ancient examples that now serve as excellent oil reservoirs.

 

 


 

Utah Geological Survey

POTD June 27, 2013: Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Box Elder County, Utah.

Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Box Elder County, Utah.
Photographer: Ken Krahulec

The 1500-foot-long Spiral Jetty, built in 1970 of black Tertiary-age basalt, is the  principal earthwork of the  prominent American sculptor Robert Smithson.

Utah Geological Survey

SURVEY NOTES volume 42, number2

This Issue Contains:

  • Modeling Ground-Water Flow in Cedar Valley
  • Bringing Earth’s Ancient Past to Life
  • Ground-Water Monitoring Network
  • Energy News: Saline Water Disposal in the Uinta Basin, Utah
  • Glad You Asked: How many islands are in Great Salt Lake?
  • GeoSights: Fremont Indian State Park, Sevier County, Utah
  • Survey News
  • New Publications

READ THIS ISSUE

PAST ISSUES

Utah Geological Survey

OPEN-FILE REPORT 539

OFR-539MINERALOGY AND FLUID CHEMISTRY OF SURFICIAL SEDIMENTS IN THE NEWFOUNDLAND BASIN, TOOELE AND BOX ELDER COUNTIES, UTAH
Blair F. Jones, William W. White III, Kathryn M. Conko, Daniel M. Webster, and James F. Kohler

This CD contains a 53-page report (plus 43-page appendices) that details a three-year field study of Newfoundland Basin’s shallow-brine aquifer and associated playa and lacustrine sediments. Chemical and mineralogical characterization was performed on brine and selected core samples collected from the shallow-brine aquifer and sediments intercepted by 24 boreholes and 8 sets of nested monitoring wells. Aquifer tests were also conducted on specific boreholes and monitoring wells. Ground-water-brine transport in sediments of the shallow-brine aquifer occurred mainly in the permeable sedimentary facies, and possibly in vertical fissures observed in mudflat-clay facies. TEQUIL predicted mineral-sequence plots, from simulated step-wise evaporation of pore-fluid brines from peripheral and central-basin core samples, demonstrated that near-surface pore-fluid brines (<5-foot/1.5-meter depth) were a mixture of pre-West Desert Pumping Project ground water and Great Salt Lake brine. Conversely, pore fluids from core depths ranging from 5 to nearly 7 feet (1.5 to 2.1 meters) below ground level had predicted mineral sequence plots similar to the pre-pumping ground-water brine.

CD (53 p. + 43 p. appendices)
OFR-539……..$14.95