NONLINEAR DYNAMICS OF THE GREAT-SALT-LAKE - DIMENSION ESTIMATION

We study the possibility that variations in the volume of the Great Sa lt Lake (GSL), a large, closed basin lake, may be described as a low-d imensional nonlinear dynamical system. There is growing evidence for s tructure in the recurrence patterns of climatic fluctuations that driv e western United States hydrology. Moreover, the time behavior of such lakes is generally more regular than that of the climatic forcing. Th is suggests the possibility that an analysis of the 144-year, biweekly time series of the GSL volume may shed some light on the underlying d ynamics of lake variations. Three methods (correlation dimension, near est neighbor dimension, and false neighbor dimension) of estimating at tractor dimension are applied and compared. The analysis suggests that the GSL dynamics may be described by a dimension of about four. Impli cations of such analyses relative to low-frequency variations and colo red noise and limitations of such analyses are discussed.