Kenneth D. Adams
Joanna L. Redwine

The Great Basin of the western U.S. is an incredibly diverse region characterized by a multitude of closed basins that together define an area of internal drainage that extends for about 478,000 km2 across five states and about 9º of latitude. This region contains both the highest (Mt Whitney; 4418 m) and lowest (Badwater; -86 m) points in the conterminous U.S. and possesses a wide range of climates from hot and arid to cool and moist. The interactions between topography, geology, climate, and vegetation have created many different types of environments spread across the landscape. These environments, however, are not static and there is abundant evidence for past climate and environmental change in the Great Basin, which have been thoroughly documented by geologists, geomorphologists, paleoecologists, archaeologists, and other Quaternary scientists.

During the late Pleistocene, huge lakes occupied most of the closed basins in the north and large spring and marsh complexes were found in the valleys to the south. Large glacial complexes occupied the highest mountains on the periphery and within the Great Basin, leaving records that are highly complementary to the pluvial lake records. All of these archives of change have attracted the attention of researchers for many years, who together have created one of the most detailed records of environmental change on the North American continent. Because so much work has been done there, however, the challenge becomes how to best engage with and synthesize the large volume of paleoenvironmental information.

The goal of the Great Basin paleoenvironmental database (GBPED) is to make the vast literature base that has been written about the region over the last 125 years more accessible to students, researchers, and other interested people. This database includes contributions from the fields of Quaternary geology, geomorphology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, neotectonics, archaeology, palynology, geochemistry, pedology, paleoclimatology, and paleoecology. To make the literature more accessible, the locations and abstracts (if available) of published studies are presented in a Google earth interface as well as in spread sheet form, available below. With this tool you will be able to view the locations and abstracts (usually) of studies spread across the Great Basin. Simply, download the GBPED kml file onto your hard drive, launch Google earth, and open the database. You will notice that hundreds of location pins have popped up on your screen. Click on a location pin to view the reference and abstract. This approach should provide a pretty good view of what studies have been done where and by whom.

You can also download an Excel spreadsheet that contains the GBPED database here. This file will be a handy, searchable synthesis of Great Basin paleoenvironmental literature. The pages in this spreadsheet can also be loaded into ArcGIS and viewed with that interface as well.

Even with the collection and organization of the paleoenvironmental literature provided by the GBPED, it could still be a daunting task to try to synthesize what is known about the Great Basin. Fortunately, Dr. Don Grayson from the University of Washington has recently published a revision of his masterful synthesis of Great Basin paleoenvironments and its biota:

Grayson, D. K., 2011, The Great Basin, a natural prehistory: Berkeley, University of California Press, 418 p.

This is an excellent place to start for anyone who is interested in the history of the Great Basin and is written in a style that is accessible for interested lay people but has sufficient notes and documentation to satisfy the specialist. The locations and abstracts of many of the studies synthesized in this book can be found in the GBPED.