Sapropels in the Great Salt Lake basin: Indicators of massive groundwater-discharge events

Two stratigraphic intervals of finely laminated, organic-rich muds (referred to as sapropels), which in places are interbedded with mirabilite (Na2SO4 10H2O) and/or halite (NaCl), are present in cores of sediments from the floor of Great Salt Lake, UT (GSL). The muds vary in thickness, including the interbedded salt, from less than 0.5 m to over 10 m (in the case of the younger sapropel in the north arm of GSL). They contain brine-shrimp cysts and well-defined laminations less than 1 mm thick. Immediately after recovery in cores, the muds are pure black, but they oxidize to brown colors after a few days of exposure to the atmosphere. Organic-carbon contents in the younger sapropel are 3-5 %, and nitrogen percentages range from about 0.2 to 0.4. The sapropels are overlain by muds deposited in shallow hypersaline lakes, and overlie sediments of deep, freshwater lakes. Independent evidence from radiocarbon ages and shoreline chronology indicates that the upper sapropel was deposited while the lake was shallow (less than 25 m deep; average maximum depth of modern GSL is ~10 m; maximum depth of Lake Bonneville is >300 m). The age of the upper sapropel is about 10-11.5 cal ka, and it was deposited immediately following the regression of Lake Bonneville, which filled the basin during marine oxygen-isotope stage 2. The older sapropel directly overlies sediments of a deep lake that is likely correlative with oxygen-isotope stage 6. A hypothesis to explain sapropel deposition is that groundwater that had been stored in mountain aquifers during the high-lake periods was discharged onto the basin floor where it ran into the lake and formed a freshwater cap on the saline water; organic matter that settled to the bottom of the lake from the surface exhausted dissolved oxygen and accumulated on the bottom of the stratified lake. The ages of spring and wetland deposits at numerous localities around the basin are consistent with this hypothesis. This hypothetical cause for sapropel formation is similar to the process proposed in the literature for the formation of eastern Mediterranean Sea sapropels, which were deposited during periods of enhanced precipitation and freshwater runoff in streams and rivers.