MF-2323: Extent of Pleistocene Lakes in the Western Great Basin

Frequently-anticipated questions:

• What does this data set describe?
  1. How should this data set be cited?
  2. What geographic area does the data set cover?
  3. What does it look like?
  4. Does the data set describe conditions during a particular time period?
  5. What is the general form of this data set?
  6. How does the data set represent geographic features?
  7. How does the data set describe geographic features?
• Who produced the data set?
  1. Who are the originators of the data set?
  2. Who also contributed to the data set?
  3. To whom should users address questions about the data?
• Why was the data set created?
• How was the data set created?
  1. Where did the data come from?
  2. What changes have been made?
• How reliable are the data; what problems remain in the data set?
  1. How well have the observations been checked?
  2. How accurate are the geographic locations?
  3. How accurate are the heights or depths?
  4. Where are the gaps in the data? What is missing?
  5. How consistent are the relationships among the data, including topology?
• How can someone get a copy of the data set?
  1. Are there legal restrictions on access or use of the data?
  2. Who distributes the data?
  3. What's the catalog number I need to order this data set?
  4. What legal disclaimers am I supposed to read?
  5. How can I download or order the data?
• Who wrote the metadata?

Title: Extent of Pleistocene Lakes in the Western Great Basin

Abstract:

During the Pliocene to middle Pleistocene, pluvial lakes in the western Great Basin repeatedly rose to levels much higher than those of the well-documented late Pleistocene pluvial lakes, and some presently isolated basins were connected. Sedimentologic, geomorphic, and chronologic evidence at sites shown on the map indicates that Lakes Lahontan and Columbus-Rennie were as much as 70 m higher in the early-middle Pleistocene than during their late Pleistocene high stands. Lake Lahontan at its 1400-m shoreline level would submerge present-day Reno, Carson City, and Battle Mountain, and would flood other now-dry basins. To the east, Lakes Jonathan (new name), Diamond, Newark, and Hubbs also reached high stands during the early-middle(?) Pleistocene that were 25-40 m above their late Pleistocene shorelines; at these very high levels, the lakes became temporarily or permanently tributary to the Humboldt River and hence to Lake Lahontan. Such a temporary connection could have permitted fish to migrate from the Humboldt River southward into the presently isolated Newark Valley and from Lake Lahontan into Fairview Valley. The timing of drainage integration also provides suggested maximum ages for fish to populate the basins of Lake Diamond and Lake Jonathan. Reconstructing and dating these lake levels also has important implications for paleoclimate, tectonics, and drainage evolution in the western Great Basin. For example, shorelines in several basins form a stair-step sequence downward with time from the highest levels, thought to have formed at about 650 ka, to the lowest, formed during the late Pleistocene. This descending sequence indicates progressive drying of pluvial periods, possibly caused by uplift of the Sierra Nevada and other western ranges relative to the western Great Basin. However, these effects cannot account for the extremely high lake levels during the early middle Pleistocene; rather, these high levels were probably due to a combination of increased effective moisture and changes in the size of the Lahontan drainage basin.

1. How should this data set be cited?

   Reheis, Marith, 1999, Extent of Pleistocene Lakes in the Western Great Basin: USGS Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-2323, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO.

   Online Links:

   • <https://pubs.usgs.gov/mf/1999/mf-2323/>

2. What geographic area does the data set cover?

   West_Bounding_Coordinate: -121.319

   East_Bounding_Coordinate: -113.445

   North_Bounding_Coordinate: 42.973

   South_Bounding_Coordinate: 36.934

3. What does it look like?

   <https://pubs.usgs.gov/mf/1999/mf-2323/mf2323.pdf> (Adobe Portable Document Format)

   PDF image of 'Extent of Pleistocene Lakes in the Western Great Basin', showing pluvial lake distribution within the Lahontan basin.

4. Does the data set describe conditions during a particular time period?

   Calendar_Date: 1999

   Currentness_Reference: publication date

5. What is the general form of this data set?

   Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: Map

6. How does the data set represent geographic features?
   1. How are geographic features stored in the data set?

      This is a vector data set. It contains the following vector data types (SDTS terminology):

      • GT-polygon composed of chains (519)

   2. What coordinate system is used to represent geographic features?

      The map projection used is Lambert Conformal Conic.

      Projection parameters:

      Standard_Parallel: 33.0

      Standard_Parallel: 45.0

      Longitude_of_Central_Meridian: -118.0

      Latitude_of_Projection_Origin: 23.0

      False_Easting: 0

      False_Northing: 0

      Planar coordinates are encoded using Coordinate pair
      Abscissae (x-coordinates) are specified to the nearest 130.0
      Ordinates (y-coordinates) are specified to the nearest 130.0
      Planar coordinates are specified in meters

      The horizontal datum used is North American Datum of 1927.
      The ellipsoid used is Clarke 1866.
      The semi-major axis of the ellipsoid used is 6378206.4.
      The flattening of the ellipsoid used is 1/294.98.
      

      Vertical_Coordinate_System_Definition:

      Altitude_System_Definition:

      Altitude_Datum_Name: National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929

      Altitude_Resolution: 30.0

      Altitude_Distance_Units: meters

      Altitude_Encoding_Method: Attribute values

7. How does the data set describe geographic features?

   Entity_and_Attribute_Overview:

   This data set consists of 10 coverages:

   late_pl (polygon): Late Pleistocene lake boundaries. FLAG attribute indicates 1=lake present or 0=lake not present. LAKENAME attribute lists lake names. ELEVATION attribute lists lake elevation in meters.

   max_pl (polygon): Maximum extent of pre-late Pleistocene lakes. Attribute descriptions are the same as those of late_pl dataset.

   add_pl (polygon): Possible additional area of pre-late Pleistocene lakes. FLAG attribute indicates 1=lake present and 0=lake not present.

   basin_bnd (line): Boundary of Lahontan basin. No user-defined attributes.

   add_basin_bnd (line): Inferred increase of drainage basin area. No user-defined attributes.

   flows (line): Lake overflows. FLAG attribute indicates 1=late Plestocene overflow and 2=possible pre-late Pleistocene overflow and modern sill height.

   study_sites (point): Field sample sites. DEPOSIT attribute lists types as "pre-late Pleistocene" or "Pliocene."

   state_bnd (line): State boundaries. No user-defined attributes.

   majdrain (line): Major drainages in basin. No user-defined attributes.

   shadebase.tif (TIFF): Georeferenced TIFF file of shaded-relief grid for map base. Produced from DEM grid using the ARC/INFO 'HILLSHADE' command. Georeferencing information is contained in the file shadebase.tfw.

   Entity_and_Attribute_Detail_Citation:

   Most late Pleistocene shoreline altitudes and lake names are from Mifflin and Wheat (1979). Lake Warner shoreline from Weide (1975), Lake Alvord shoreline and overflow from Hemphill-Haley (1987), and Lake Coyote shoreline and overflow from Lindberg and Hemphill-Haley (1988). Pre-late Pleistocene shorelines from Reheis and others (1993), Reheis and Morrison (1997), and Reheis and others (in press), except for Lake Wellington (Stewart and Dohrenwend, 1984). See Reheis and others (1993; in press) for information on lake-deposit localities.

   Hemphill-Haley, M. A., 1987, Quaternary stratigraphy and late Holocene faulting along the base of the eastern escarpment of Steens Mountain, southeastern Oregon: M.S. thesis, Arcata, Humboldt State University, 84 p.

   Lindberg, D.N., and Hemphill-Haley, M.A., 1988, Late-Pleistocene pluvial history of the Alvord basin, Harney Co., Oregon [abstract]: Northwest Science, v. 62, no. 2, p. 81.

   Mifflin, M. D., and Wheat, M. M., 1979, Pluvial lakes and estimated pluvial climates of Nevada: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Bulletin 94, 57 p.

   Reheis, M. C., and Morrison, R. B., 1997, High, old pluvial lakes of western Nevada, in Link, P. K., and Kowallis, B. J., eds., Proterozoic to recent stratigraphy, tectonics, and volcanology, Utah, Nevada, southern Idaho and central Mexico: Provo, Brigham Young University Geology Studies, v. 1, p.459-492.

   Reheis, M. C., Sarna-Wojcicki, A. M., Reynolds, R. L., Repenning, C. A., and Mifflin, M.D., in press, Pliocene to middle Pleistocene lakes in the western Great Basin: Ages and connections, in Hershler, R., Currey, D., and Madsen, D., eds., Great Basin Aquatic Systems History: Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution.

   Reheis, M.C., Slate, J.L., Sarna-Wojcicki, A.M., and Meyer, C.E., 1993, A late Pliocene to middle Pleistocene pluvial lake in Fish Lake Valley, Nevada and California: Geological Society of American Bulletin, v. 105, p. 959-967.

   Stewart, J. H., and Dohrenwend, J. C., 1984, Geologic map of the Wellington quadrangle, Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey Open file Report 84-211, scale 1:62,500.

   Weide, D. L., 1975, Postglacial geomorphology and environments of the Warner Valley Hart Mountain area, Oregon: Ph.D. dissertation, Los Angeles, University of California, 293 p.

1. Who are the originators of the data set? (may include formal authors, digital compilers, and editors)
   • U.S. Geological Survey
   • Marith Reheis

2. Who also contributed to the data set?

   Production of this map was funded by a Gilbert Fellowship and by the Global Change and Climate History Program.

3. To whom should users address questions about the data?

   Marith Reheis
   U.S. Geological Survey
   Denver Federal Center
   Denver, CO 80225-0046
   United States
   

   303-236-1270 (voice)
   303-236-5349 (FAX)
   mreheis@usgs.gov
   

The purpose of this map is to show the differences between the extents of late Pleistocene pluvial lakes and older, larger lakes caused by much higher effective moisture during past glacial-pluvial episodes.

1. Where did the data come from?

   DEM (source 1 of 2)

   U.S. Geological Survey, unknown, 1:250,000-scale Digital Elevation Model(DEM).

   Type_of_Source_Media: online

   Source_Scale_Denominator: 250,000

   Source_Contribution: lake elevations were derived from the DEM data.

   DLG (source 2 of 2)

   U.S. Geological Survey, unknown, 1:2,000,000-scale boundary and hydrology Digital Line Graphs.

   Type_of_Source_Media: online

   Source_Scale_Denominator: 2,000,000

   Source_Contribution: state boundaries and major drainages

2. What changes have been made?

   Date: 1998 (change 1 of 4)

   Merged the appropriate 3-arc-second 1:250,000-scale DEMs to cover the study area, and ran a simple smoothing algorithm on the grid to remove striping and other unwanted artifacts inherent in the data.

   Date: 1999 (change 2 of 4)

   Created contour lines by running the ARC/INFO command 'LATTICECONTOUR' on the elevation grid for specific elevation contours.

   Date: 1999 (change 3 of 4)

   Used the ARC/INFO command 'GENERALIZE' to smooth the newly created contour lines.

   Date: 1999 (change 4 of 4)

   Created lake polygons by selecting contour lines corresponding to observed or inferred lake shoreline elevations and built them as polygons. Attributed each lake polygon with the lake's name (item 'LAKENAME') and set item 'FLAG' to 1 for each polygon that corresponds to a late Pleistocene lake area. Set the value of item 'ELEVATION' to the value of the elevation contour.

1. How well have the observations been checked?

   Attributes within this dataset consist of the names of the lakes only, or flags (0|1) for presence/absence of a lake within a particular polygon. The attribute tables were checked for completeness (i.e. no empty fields), consistency (each "flag" field contains a 0 or 1 only), and for spelling of geographic feature names.

2. How accurate are the geographic locations?

   The lake shoreline locations are delineated using contour lines derived from DEM source data with 3 arc-second (nominally 90 meters) grid cell resolution. Horizontal accuracy of DEM data is dependent upon the horizontal spacing of the elevation matrix. Within a standard DEM, most terrain features are generalized by being reduced to grid nodes spaced at regular intersections in the horizontal plane. This generalization reduces the ability to recover positions of specific features less than the internal spacing during testing and results in a de facto filtering or smoothing of the surface during gridding. The broad DMA production objective for a 1-degree DTED-1 is to satisfy an absolute horizontal accuracy (feature to datum) of 130 m, circular error at 90-percent probability. The relative horizontal accuracy (feature to feature on the surface of the elevation model), although not specified, will in many cases conform to the actual hypsographic features with higher integrity than indicated by the absolute accuracy.

3. How accurate are the heights or depths?

   The lake elevations were derived from DEM source data with 3 arc-second (nominally 90 meters) grid cell resolution. Vertical accuracy of DEM data is dependent upon the spatial resolution (horizontal grid spacing), quality of the source data, collection and processing procedures, and digitizing systems. Within a standard DEM, most terrain features are generalized by being reduced to grid nodes spaced at regular intersections in the horizontal plane. This generalization reduces the ability to recover positions of specific features less than the internal spacing during testing and results in a de facto filtering or smoothing of the surface during gridding. The broad DMA production objective for a 1-degree DTED-1 is to satisfy an absolute vertical accuracy (feature to mean sea level) of + or - 30 m linear error at 90-percent probability. The relative vertical accuracy (feature to feature on the surface of the elevation model), although not specified, will in many cases conform to the actual hypsographic features with higher integrity than indicated by the absolute accuracy.

4. Where are the gaps in the data? What is missing?

   Late Pleistocene lake areas are shown for all pluvial lakes within the map area that extend into Nevada or are part of the Lahontan drainage basin. However, larger, pre-late Pleistocene areas are shown only for lake basins which have been visited in the field by the author. The extent of older pluvial lakes in unvisited lake basins is unknown.

5. How consistent are the relationships among the observations, including topology?

   Lake areas (late Pleistocene and maximum) are based on shoreline altitudes measured at the field localities shown on map and described in detail in Reheis and Morrison (1997) and Reheis and others (in press). Lake areas were plotted using contour lines of lake-surface altitudes generated from DEMs. Inferred additional area of lakes is approximately delineated based on the author's judgement and is least accurate. Map elements were visually checked for overshoots, undershoots, duplicate features, and other errors.

Are there legal restrictions on access or use of the data?

Access_Constraints: none

Use_Constraints: none

1. Who distributes the data set? (Distributor 1 of 1)

   U.S.Geological Survey
   USGS Information Services
   Denver, CO 80225-0046
   United States
   

   1-888-ASK-USGS (voice)
   

2. What's the catalog number I need to order this data set?

   MF-2323

3. What legal disclaimers am I supposed to read?

   none

4. How can I download or order the data?
   • Availability in non-digital form:

     Available as one printed sheet - order from USGS at the address listed above or see <http://mapping.usgs.gov/esic/order_forms/map_order.html> for more ordering information.

   • Cost to order the data: US$20.00

   • Availability in digital form:

     Data format:	Arc/Info Export (.e00), ArcView shapefile (.shp)
     Network links:	<https://pubs.usgs.gov/mf/1999/mf-2323/>

   • Cost to order the data: none

Dates:

Last modified: 21-Jul-1999
Last Reviewed: 21-Jul-1999

Metadata author:

U.S. Geological Survey
c/o Paco VanSistine
GIS Specialist
Denver Federal Center
Denver, CO 80225-0046
United States

303-236-4610 (voice)
dsistine@usgs.gov

Metadata standard:

FGDC CSDGM (FGDC-STD-001-1998)