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The Use of Total Lake-Surface Area as an Indicator of Climatic Change: Examples from the Lahontan Basin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

L.V. Benson  and
F.L. Paillet
L.V. Benson
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, MS 404, Denver Federal Center, Denver, Colorado 80225 USA
F.L. Paillet
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, MS 404, Denver Federal Center, Denver, Colorado 80225 USA
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Abstract

Variation in the size of lakes in the Lahontan basin is topographically constrained. River diversion also has played a major role in regulating lake size in Lahontan subbasins. The proper gage of lake response to change in the hydrologic balance is neither lake depth (level) nor lake volume but instead lake-surface area. Normalization of surface area is necessary when comparing surface areas of lakes in basins having different topographies. To a first approximation, normalization can be accomplished by dividing the paleosurface area of a lake by its mean-historical, reconstructed surface area.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , November 1989 , pp. 262 - 275
Copyright
University of Washington

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