Abstract North Ingebrigt lake, a small, hypersaline playa basin in the Great Sand Hills of southwestern Saskatchewan, contains one of Canada's thickest Holocene terrestrial salt sequences. The 10 000-year long lacustrine sequence from the basin consists of well indurated salt, with only minor mud and organic debris.
Cores lack obvious bedding, colour variation, or other visible sedimentary structures.
This long and apparently uninterrupted sequence of soluble salts implies that the lake was characterized by high salinity throughout its Holocene history. Preliminary chronostratigraphy indicates that accumulation rates have varied greatly in the past. Similarly, variations in salt mineralogy suggest that the basin experienced significant changes in brine composition. These evaporites permit reconstruction of specific ion activities and ratios in the brine through time, providing the first detailed evidence of the complexity of brine evolution in a closed-basin lacustrine environment in western Canada.