Award Date
1-1-1998
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Geoscience
First Committee Member
Frederick Bachhuber
Number of Pages
79
Abstract
During Pleistocene time, Coal Valley, Nevada, was situated between a pluvial climatic zone to the north and a non-pluvial climactic zone to the south. The Coal Lake section represents {dollar}>{dollar}20,000 years of continuous deposition, recording a saline lake phase (Early Coal Lake) present since at least 32,000 BP, evolving to a freshwater lake (Coal Lake Intermediate) {dollar}\sim{dollar}28,000 BP. Maximum lake development (290 km{dollar}\sp2{dollar} in area) was within 2000 years of {dollar}\sim{dollar}20,000 BP, and was probably persistent through deglaciation. Ostracode ecology suggests that water salinity varied little through time, which may be indicative of consistently low ambient temperatures, high precipitation levels, and/or high basin seepage rates throughout the life of the lake. Coal Lake probably experienced more direct control by regional groundwater hydrology than by climate. The revised paleohydrologic index of Coal Valley is (Z{dollar}\sb{\rm cv}{dollar} = 0.11, compared to the previous value of 0.07, suggesting that the water balance of Coal Lake was higher than previously thought.
Keywords
Coal; County; Lincoln; Nevada; Paleoecology; Paleolimnology; Region; Valley
Controlled Subject
Paleoecology; Paleontology; Geology
File Format
File Size
2355.2 KB
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Permissions
If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have the full text removed from Digital Scholarship@UNLV, please submit a request to digitalscholarship@unlv.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.
Repository Citation
Feig, Anthony Dean, "Paleolimnology and paleoecology of the Coal Valley region, Lincoln County, Nevada" (1998). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 868.
http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/gqdl-hsmj
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
