Lake Bonneville has been recognized as the premier Late Pleistocene pluvial of the western United States since the time of G. K. Gilbert.  As such it has provided significant insight into the climate of the North American continental interior.

 

Jewell, Kathleen Nicoll of the University of Utah Geography Department and Jack Oviatt of Kansas State University will be undertaking an NSF-funded study of the early transgressive shorelines of Lake Bonneville with special emphasis on the hydrodynamics of wave-formed features.

 

Previous work on river incision in Lake Bonneville has resulted in an understanding of the mean circulation and wind directions of the Lake Pleistocene (left diagram) and speculation about the nature of strong storms over Lake Bonneville on the basis of the alignment of spits (right diagrams).

see 2010 P^3 article or 2007 Quaternary Research article

 

A key finding of this work is that the strong winds capable for making geomorphic features were predominantly from the north in the Late Pleistocene which is markedly different from the strong winds of today that are predominantly from the south (see 2011 Geomorphology article)

 

 

Past students who have conducted research on Lake Bonneville include Alisa Felton, who studied the tufas in the lake.

see 2006 Journal of Geology article

 

Ian Schofield studied two prominent Lake Bonneville spits and their relationship to wave energy in the lake.

 

see 2004 Earth Surface Processes and Landforms article

 

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