2015 Conference

Poster Presentation

Baker Creek which lies in Great Basin National Park, Nevada exhibits one of the most pristinely preserved terminal recessional morraines of Pleistocene age.  This moraine sequence was used to reconstruct spatial and temporal variations in continental climate. Numerical models of steady state glacier mass balance and ice flow, developed by Plummer and Phillips (2003), were applied to Baker Creek to simulate ice extent during the last glaciation. The objective of running these models is to limit the range of temperature and precipitation combinations that accompanied the interval of moraine deposition. The Wheeler Peak Rock Glacier was used to calibrate the model, as the head of the glacier lies perennially in Baker Creek. Modeling assuming that precipitation is near modern, results in a temperature depression of 9 ° C during the glaciers maximum extent. These results compliment other glacial modeling results from Nevada, which all indicate a consistent temperature depression pattern of 9 ° to 10° C.  The consistency of the modeling results indicates the viability of the data for Pleistocene paleoclimate analysis in Nevada.