description: Bear Lake is a tectonic lake that has existed for at least several hundred thousand years. The lake basin is a relatively simple half graben, a spoon-shaped depression tilted toward the main fault on the east side of the lake. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with researchers from several universities, has been studying the sediments of Bear Lake since 1996. The general purpose of this effort is to reconstruct past limnological conditions and regional climate on a range of timescales, from hundreds of years to hundreds of thousands of years. This research relates to a variety of human concerns, including water usage in the Bear River basin. Past work has included several coring operations, a seismic-reflection survey, sediment-trap deployments, a barge-mounted drilling operation with the GLAD800 drill rig, and a variety of other studies. The objectives of the September, 2002 operations, preliminarily reported here, were (1) to compile a detailed bathymetric map of the lake using swath-mapping techniques, in order to provide baseline data for a variety of applications and studies, and (2) to complete a sidescan-sonar survey of the lake, providing a nearly complete acoustic image of the lake floor. Limited amounts of subbottom acoustic-reflection data (chirp) were also collected, along with samples of lake-floor sediments representative of different kinds of backscatter patterns. These surveys followed an earlier subbottom acoustic-reflection survey (1997), using boomer and 3.5 kHz systems (S. M. Colman, unpublished data).; abstract: Bear Lake is a tectonic lake that has existed for at least several hundred thousand years. The lake basin is a relatively simple half graben, a spoon-shaped depression tilted toward the main fault on the east side of the lake. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with researchers from several universities, has been studying the sediments of Bear Lake since 1996. The general purpose of this effort is to reconstruct past limnological conditions and regional climate on a range of timescales, from hundreds of years to hundreds of thousands of years. This research relates to a variety of human concerns, including water usage in the Bear River basin. Past work has included several coring operations, a seismic-reflection survey, sediment-trap deployments, a barge-mounted drilling operation with the GLAD800 drill rig, and a variety of other studies. The objectives of the September, 2002 operations, preliminarily reported here, were (1) to compile a detailed bathymetric map of the lake using swath-mapping techniques, in order to provide baseline data for a variety of applications and studies, and (2) to complete a sidescan-sonar survey of the lake, providing a nearly complete acoustic image of the lake floor. Limited amounts of subbottom acoustic-reflection data (chirp) were also collected, along with samples of lake-floor sediments representative of different kinds of backscatter patterns. These surveys followed an earlier subbottom acoustic-reflection survey (1997), using boomer and 3.5 kHz systems (S. M. Colman, unpublished data).

description: Bear Lake is a tectonic lake that has existed for at least several hundred thousand years. The lake basin is a relatively simple half graben, a spoon-shaped depression tilted toward the main fault on the east side of the lake. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with researchers from several universities, has been studying the sediments of Bear Lake since 1996. The general purpose of this effort is to reconstruct past limnological conditions and regional climate on a range of timescales, from hundreds of years to hundreds of thousands of years. This research relates to a variety of human concerns, including water usage in the Bear River basin. Past work has included several coring operations, a seismic-reflection survey, sediment-trap deployments, a barge-mounted drilling operation with the GLAD800 drill rig, and a variety of other studies. The objectives of the September, 2002 operations, preliminarily reported here, were (1) to compile a detailed bathymetric map of the lake using swath-mapping techniques, in order to provide baseline data for a variety of applications and studies, and (2) to complete a sidescan-sonar survey of the lake, providing a nearly complete acoustic image of the lake floor. Limited amounts of subbottom acoustic-reflection data (chrip) were also collected, along with samples of lake-floor sediments representative of different kinds of backscatter patterns. These surveys followed an earlier subbottom acoustic-reflection survey (1997), using boomer and 3.5 kHz systems (S. M. Colman, unpublished data).; abstract: Bear Lake is a tectonic lake that has existed for at least several hundred thousand years. The lake basin is a relatively simple half graben, a spoon-shaped depression tilted toward the main fault on the east side of the lake. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with researchers from several universities, has been studying the sediments of Bear Lake since 1996. The general purpose of this effort is to reconstruct past limnological conditions and regional climate on a range of timescales, from hundreds of years to hundreds of thousands of years. This research relates to a variety of human concerns, including water usage in the Bear River basin. Past work has included several coring operations, a seismic-reflection survey, sediment-trap deployments, a barge-mounted drilling operation with the GLAD800 drill rig, and a variety of other studies. The objectives of the September, 2002 operations, preliminarily reported here, were (1) to compile a detailed bathymetric map of the lake using swath-mapping techniques, in order to provide baseline data for a variety of applications and studies, and (2) to complete a sidescan-sonar survey of the lake, providing a nearly complete acoustic image of the lake floor. Limited amounts of subbottom acoustic-reflection data (chrip) were also collected, along with samples of lake-floor sediments representative of different kinds of backscatter patterns. These surveys followed an earlier subbottom acoustic-reflection survey (1997), using boomer and 3.5 kHz systems (S. M. Colman, unpublished data).

The Geographic Information Retrieval and Analysis System (GIRAS) was developed in the mid 70s to put into digital form a number of data layers which were of interest to the USGS. One of these data layers was the Hydrologic Units. The map is based on the Hydrologic Unit Maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey Office of Water Data Coordination, together with the list descriptions and name of region, subregion, accounting units, and cataloging unit. The hydrologic units are encoded with an eight- digit number that indicates the hydrologic region (first two digits), hydrologic subregion (second two digits), accounting unit (third two digits), and cataloging unit (fourth two digits). The data produced by GIRAS was originally collected at a scale of 1:250,000. This data set is a modification for Wyoming of the original United States HUC data produced by the USGS. The primary modifications made in this data set by the Wyoming Water Resources Center include 1) removal of hydrologic units that do not drain witi Wyoming and 2) modification of the hydrologic unit boundaries to better encompass streams and lakes represented in the 1:100,000 scale Digital Line Graph (DLG) of surficial hydrography. The HUC boundaries have not been "clipped" to the Wyoming border, in order to maintain the natural boundaries of the units. This metadata has also been altered from original USGS metadata to be more specific for Wyoming.