Late Quaternary evolution of a playa margin at Lake Frome, South Australia
Introduction
Lakes are sensitive archives for the reconstruction of paleoenvironments and hydrology, and can thus provide crucial data for an improved understanding of past regional to global-scale changes in atmospheric circulation systems in the Quaternary (Harrison, 1993, Street-Perrott and Harrison, 1985). In Australia, the large endorheic playa lake systems of lakes Eyre, Frome, Callabonna, Blanche and Gregory are situated in the arid interior of the continent, and have played a central role in reconstructing regional-scale changes in paleoenvironments and hydrology (Nanson and Price, 1998). Early studies made use of discontinuous lacustrine sedimentary archives in the central parts of the lake basins to infer changes in depositional environments over time (Bowler et al., 1986, Magee et al., 1995). The chronology and sedimentology of shoreline, fluvial and aeolian sediments has been used to indicate that these dry playa lakes in the now arid centre of Australia had repeatedly filled to form a continuous water body or mega-lake with a maximum extent of nearly 35,000 km2 (DeVogel et al., 2004, Leon and Cohen, 2012, Magee et al., 2004).
More recently, the detailed survey of the lake floor topography (Leon and Cohen, 2012) and shoreline geomorphology (Nanson et al., 1998) in combination with the increasing availability of chronological data from beach ridges around these mega-lakes (Cohen et al., 2015, Cohen et al., 2012, Cohen et al., 2011) have placed new constraints on both timing and magnitude of peak lake levels and volumes during these mega-lake events. Peak highstands with maximum water depths of ∼20–25 m and >15 m at Lake Eyre and Lake Frome/Callabonna, respectively, occurred exclusively in the first half of the last glacial cycle prior to ∼50 ka (Cohen et al., 2012, Magee et al., 2004), while no significant evidence for filling events has been reported from Lake Eyre during the last 45–50 ka (Cohen et al., 2015, Magee and Miller, 1998, Magee et al., 2004). In contrast, successively younger and lower lake levels are recorded around the southernmost internally draining playa lakes Frome and Callabonna during the same time (Cohen et al., 2012, Cohen et al., 2011), raising the question if this divergence could result from regionally differing responses to lake-specific hydrologic boundary conditions and thresholds (Benson and Paillet, 1989, Cohen et al., 2012), or may in fact reflect significant changes in runoff and/or precipitation sources related to large-scale shifts in atmospheric circulation pattern (Cohen et al., 2012).
To answer these questions, a more comprehensive understanding of the lake history is required, which could be achieved by combining existing shoreline data with sedimentary and stratigraphic records (Wohl and Enzel, 1995). While the information stored in shoreline records such as beach ridges is generally restricted to the major lake stands (Burrough and Thomas, 2009, Sack and Álvarez, 2001), playa marginal settings provide valuable complementary information on changes in local-scale sedimentary environments during transgressive, regressive and low-stand episodes. This is particularly obvious when considering the wide range of landforms such as aeolian dunes, coastal spits and bars, or terminal fan-delta and splay systems around the modern day margins of the dry playa lakes in Central Australia (Ainsworth et al., 2012, Callen and Tedford, 1976, Croke et al., 1996, Draper and Jensen, 1976, Fisher et al., 2008, Lang et al., 2004). This study presents an overview of these diverse playa marginal landforms, sediments, stratigraphy and chronology in the vicinity of the Balcanoona Creek terminal splay on the western shore of Lake Frome with the objectives of (i) evaluating the potential of playa margins to provide complementary information to link existing shoreline records and lacustrine sediments, and (ii) contribute new data towards linking major changes in regional fluvial activity and lake environments over the late Quaternary.
Section snippets
Regional setting
The Lake Eyre Basin occupies a structural depression in the centre of Australia and drains an area of approximately 1.12 million km2, where rainfall and runoff ranges are highly variable (Alley, 1998, Habeck-Fardy and Nanson, 2014, Magee et al., 1995). In the southern basin, Lake Frome is an ephemeral salt lake or playa located between ∼30 and 31°S, and 139.5–140°E (Fig. 1a, b). With a total area of ∼2700 km2 at an average elevation close to sea level, it is the most southerly playa in an arc
Geomorphology and topography
The geomorphology of the study area was visually interpreted from colour, density and texture patterns in the high-resolution satellite imagery in Google Earth and mapped in ArcGIS 10.0 (Fig. 2); (Verstappen, 1977). Contour lines and mean elevations for some of the mapped landforms were derived from a one arcsecond (∼30 m) digital elevation model (Fig. 3); (Gallant et al., 2011). Most field work was conducted during the dry season of 2011, and complemented by high-resolution topographic
Playa margin geomorphology
Our study area is located at the interface between the lowermost footslopes of large pediments and alluvial fans descending from the Flinders Ranges, and the playa floor of Lake Frome separated by the modern shoreline (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). Based on our topographically corrected DGPS measurements the lake floor in the immediate vicinity of the shoreline and at the spit is ∼1.2 m AHD (Fig. 3), and the geomorphology on both sides of the shoreline shows considerable variability. Most of the northern
Interpretation and discussion
In combination, our geomorphological, stratigraphic, macrofossil and chronological data provide the first record for the evolution of the Lake Frome playa margin over at least ∼90–110 ka, providing the base for the interpretation of types and temporal changes of fluvial, aeolian, lacustrine and coastal processes at the dynamic interface of the shoreline, and the discussion of their paleoenvironmental significance.
Conclusions
This combined geomorphic, sedimentary, microfossil and chronological dataset has enabled the first reconstruction of the late Quaternary evolution of the western playa margin of Lake Frome. As such, it provides new data towards an improved link between previously published records of lake stands as expressed by beach ridges along the western shores of Lake Frome and Callabonna (Cohen et al., 2012, Gliganic et al., 2014), and the detailed sedimentary, paleoenvironmental and geochemical records
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of South Australia, for providing a research permit (Y-25926-1) for field work at Lake Frome. Funding was provided to TJC and BGJ by an ARC Discovery Grant (DP 1096911). The thoughtful comments of David Thomas and an anonymous reviewer helped to improve an earlier version of the manuscript.
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2017, Quaternary Science ReviewsCitation Excerpt :Gliganic et al., 2014). There were also short lived flooding events reaching Lake Frome near Balacanoona Creek in the north during the late Holocene (May et al., 2015). Further north at Yudnamutana Cave speleothem growth ceased at ∼5 ka, marking the onset of arid conditions similar to the present (Quigley et al., 2010).
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- 1
Present address: Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences – Geology, University of Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.
- 2
Present address: Institute for Geology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.