Understanding the historical evolution of sedimentation in a lake requires not only a grounding in facies interpretation but also an understanding of the larger-scale, lakewide linkages between deposition and those factors influencing sedimentation. The facies models we examined in chapter 7 can be linked to understand the differences in deposits between lake basins. Basin-scale facies models focus on the major interactions between climate or tectonic/ volcanic activity and sedimentation, attempting to explain why particular facies types develop in particular areas or at particular times in a lake’s history. Here I will focus on a few examples from the most intensively studied depositional settings, including lake types defined by mode of origin and evolution (rifts, glacial lakes, etc.) as well as saline lakes and playas, which share chemical and climatic attributes. Large-scale facies modeling in rift lakes has been driven by a need to understand the occurrence of hydrocarbons in ancient rifts (Lambiase, 1990; Katz, 2001). This in turn spurred a rapid accumulation of seismic reflection and facies data in the East African rift lakes and Lake Baikal (Russia) during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as attempts to synthesize these data and integrate them into general models. As we saw in chapter 2, the evolution of rift basins involves the development of asymmetric half-grabens and, in larger lake systems, the linkage of these half-grabens in a linear chain. As rift basins age, progressive deformation will eventually cause extensive deformation on both sides of the basin, transforming them into asymmetric full grabens, as seen in Lake Baikal today. This pattern of tectonic development has consequences for geomorphology, sediment delivery rates and locations, and sediment composition, that also vary depending on whether the lake basin is relatively full (high-stand conditions) or empty (low-stand) (Rosendahl et al., 1986; Cohen, 1990; Scholz and Rosendahl, 1990; Tiercelin et al., 1992; Soreghan and Cohen, 1996). Large-scale depositional patterns in a rift lake therefore represent an interplay between tectonic and climatic forces, factors that operate on somewhat different time scales.
