PAVILION LAKE, CANADA - A WINDOW INTO EARLY PLANETARY AQUATIC SYSTEMS

Pavilion Lake, Canada is a groundwater fed lake that is lined with microbialite structures at depths of 5 to 30 meters. This lake has become the focus of the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP), which is an on-going, multi-disciplinary science effort to understand the existence of unusual microbialites in Pavilion Lake. This project forms part of a NASA-UBC led effort to investigate the analog potential of terrestrial lacustrine carbonates to early Earth and potentially early Mars systems.

Here we present an overview of research at Pavilion Lake: a combination of hypothesis and exploration driven research to study the lake's unusual freshwater microbialite structures. The foundation for this study is the seminal work by Laval et al. (2000), which provides an overview of the morphological characteristics of the microbialites, and explores the physical limnology of Pavilion Lake. Several key hypotheses and questions related to the role of biology in the formation of the microbialites, and the effect of varying light levels on the microbialite morphologies have since resulted from Laval et al. (2000), but to date remain untested and unanswered. We are currently revisiting Pavilion Lake to test hypotheses concerning the geobiological factors affecting the microbialite formation, and to collect further exploration data related to understanding the lake's structure and development. In particular, we are (1) investigating the hypothesized biological origins of the microbialites and the controlling input of PAR on their morphological variation, (2) exploring the physical and chemical limnological properties of the lake, especially as these characteristics pertain to microbialite formation, and (3) determining the spectral (visible to thermal infrared) and erosional properties of the carbonates.

This presentation will provide an overview of key findings from the current exploration thrust and describe planned future endeavors.