What’s New About the Old Bonneville Basin? Fresh Insights About the Modern Limnogeology of Great Salt Lake

Abstract

Located in the Great Basin Desert within the North American continental interior, the Great Salt Lake (GSL) is a remnant of freshwater Palaeolake Bonneville, and today is the fourth largest perennial and closed basin lake in the world. More than a century of study on the Pleistocene megalake and its modern hypersaline environment (latitude 40.7° to 41.7°N, longitude 111.9° to 113.1°W) has significantly contributed to what we know about lake systems, sediments, and Quaternary climate change. Ongoing geolimnological work on GSL is lively and diverse; there is much progress, this review paper highlights select key themes of interest. Some recent studies aim to quantify hypersaline lake water properties and hydrodynamics in context of human activities (e.g., pressures from transportation, mining, development), as science-informed monitoring and managing GSL waters has become a greater priority for extractive industries, resource managers, environmentalists, and regulating officials. Copious research leverages new technologies and methods to identify and describe microbes living in the GSL and its brine, including halophiles, halobacteria, fungi, and viruses. The GSL’s self-sustaining microbial ecology drives the high productivity of the lake, which has cascading global impacts for millions of migratory birds that stop at this oasis to feed. Furthermore, the question of what extremophiles live in each niche of the modern saline ecosystem in relation to salts and carbonate organosedimentary sedimentary systems is broadly relevant for understanding the deep rock record, the nature of early Earth evolution, and for astrobiological prospection as we aim to find life on other planets.