Quantitative identification of erosional Lake Bonneville shorelines, Utah

- High-quality LiDAR data allow recognition of subtle shorelines in Lake Bonneville.
- Five transgressive shorelines are correlated across the basin.
- Two of the five shorelines may be related to previously described oscillations.

Although the major shorelines of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville have been recognized for more than 100 years, less prominent shorelines have proven difficult to quantitatively identify and correlate since the time of G. K. Gilbert. By applying the Savitzky-Golay filter and methodology of Hare et al. to high resolution LiDAR data of selected erosional shorelines, five distinct, correlatable shorelines between the well-described Bonneville and Provo shorelines on the transgressive limb of the Lake Bonneville hydrograph are documented. The results provide a framework for determining whether these transgressive features represent lake oscillations or stillstands during the height of the Last Glacial Maximum in the eastern Great Basin of the western United States with possible attendant paleoclimate implications.