The topographically closed basins of the Great Basin (Utah, Nevada, California) contain an outstanding geologic record of lakes that filled and drained during the Pleistocene. Collaborative research with the U.S. Geological Survey is aimed at understanding the lake-level fluctuations in the Bear Lake/Bonneville and Mojave/Death Valley drainages.  The investigations focus on three research questions: (1) the timing of lake-level changes; (2) the climate conditions that caused them, especially the relative contribution of temperature lowering versus precipitation increase (effective precipitation); and (3) the role of major river diversions in controlling lake-level changes, especially the history of the Bear River as it changed course from the Pacific Ocean into the Great Basin.  Common to these questions is the use of amino acids preserved in fossil mollusk and ostracode shells, coupled with independent dating (14C, tephrochronology, and luminescence chronology).  In addition, my colleagues, students, and I are working on a continuous, carbonate-rich, 120-m-long sediment core from Bear Lake, Utah/Idaho that spans the last quarter-million years.


Read more about the Bear Lake project at:

USGS Western Lakes and Catchment Systems

Or more about my work with others in:

Hart, W.S., Quade, J., Madsen, D.B., Kaufman, D.S., and Oviatt, C.G., 2004, The 87Sr/86Sr ratios of lacustrine carbonates and lake-level history of the Bonneville paleolake system. Geological Society of America Bulletin 116, 1107-1119.

Kaufman, D.S., 2003, Amino acid paleothermometry of Quaternary ostracodes from the Bonneville Basin, Utah: Quaternary Science Reviews 22, 899-914.

Laabs, B.J.C. and Kaufman, D.S., 2003, Quaternary highstands in Bear Lake Valley, Utah and Idaho: Geological Society of America Bulletin 115, p. 463-478.

Gianniny, G.L., Thackray, G.D., Kaufman, D.S., Forman, S.L., Sherbondy, M., Findeisen, D., 2002, Late Quaternary lake highstands in the Mud Lake and Big Lost trough sub-basins of Lake Terreton, Idaho, in Link, P.K., and Mink, L.L., eds., Geology, Hydrology, and Environmental Radiation; Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho: Geological Society of America Special Paper 353, 77-90.

Kaufman, D.S., Forman, S.L., Bright, J., 2001, Age of the Cutler Dam Alloformation (late Pleistocene), Bonneville Basin, Utah: Quaternary Research 56, 322-334.

Link, P.K., Kaufman, D.S., and Thackray G.D., 1999, Field guide to Pleistocene lakes Thatcher and Bonneville and the Bonneville flood, southeastern Idaho: in, Hughes, S.S., and Thackray, G.D., eds., Guidebook to the Geology of Eastern Idaho: Idaho Museum of Natural History, Pocatello, 251-266.

Oviatt, C.G., Thompson, R.S., Kaufman, D.S., Bright, J.E., and Forester, R.M., 1999, Reinterpretation of the Burmester core, Bonneville basin, Utah: Quaternary Research 52, 180-184.

Bouchard, D.P., Kaufman, D.S., Hochberg, A., Quade, J., 1998, Quaternary history of the Thatcher Basin, Idaho, reconstructed from the 87Sr/86Sr and amino acid composition of lacustrine fossils—implications for the diversion of the Bear River into the Bonneville basin:  Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 141, 95-114.