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In
rapidly growing urban corridors, the physical environment and natural
landscape are undergoing change and loss. Geoantiquities are natural,
geologic records of both Earth history and environmental change at local
and regional scales, with important global implications. Pleistocene
to Holocene geoantiquities of Lake Bonneville are well recorded in deltas,
spits and bars, glacial moraines, alluvial fans and debris flows, fluvial
terraces, fault scarps, modern lakeshores, playas, and salt flats. Although
these geoantiquities are well exposed along the Wasatch Front, Utah,
they are particularly vulnerable to destruction, corruption, removal,
and burial where current and anticipated population growth rates are
double the national average. A number of urban issues including land
use, population and growth planning, geohazards, and environmental quality
and safety are intimately tied to the physical landscape, where geoantiquities
can be of great societal value for educational, scientific, and practical
reasons. However, human rates of removal and/or destruction of geoantiquities
exceed the original depositional rates by orders of magnitude. Whole
fans, bars, spits, and shoreline deposits are rapidly disappearing due
to urban impact. Decisions on urban issues need to be based on a full
complement of scientific information. Case studies on the Stockton Bar,
immortalized by G. K. Gilbert, will serve as examples of geoantiquity
investigations. In our model of geoantiquities interaction with Wasatch
Front urban growth, geographic information systems
(GIS) are used to integrate inventories of geoantiquties and to
help predict urban impact on the landscape and to develop management
plans for endangered areas. Education and information transfer are essential
to protecting geoantiquities and to prioritizing those parts of the
landscape that should be left intact and managed for long-term public
and scientific benefit. Partnerships with government agencies, educational
institutions, non-governmental organizations, public interest groups,
and committed individuals provide pathways to raise awareness and produce
broad involvement in planning and implementation of geoantiquities resource
management.
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