The Geography of the Region about Devil's Lake and the Dalles of the Wisconsin: With Some Notes on Its Surface GeologySalisbury, Rollin D.
Science
The Geography of the Region about Devil's Lake and the Dalles of the Wisconsin: With Some Notes on Its Surface Geology
Salisbury, Rollin D.
Physical geography; Wisconsin -- Description and travel
Thus the drainage changes effected by the drift after the ice was gone,
concerned both lakes and rivers. In this region there are several
illustrations of these changes.
_Lakes._--The lake basins of drift-covered regions are of various types.
Some of them are altogether in drift, some partly in drift and partly in
rock, and some wholly in rock. Basins in the drift were likely to be
developed whenever heavy deposits surrounded thin ones. They are
especially common in the depressions of terminal moraines.
Another class of lake basins occurs in valleys, the basins being partly
rock and partly drift. If a thick deposit of drift be made at one point
in a valley, while above there is little or none, the thick deposit will
form a dam, above which waters may accumulate, forming a pond or lake.
Again, a ridge of drift may be deposited in the form of a curve with its
ends against a rock-ridge, thus giving rise to a basin.
In the course of time, the lakes and ponds in the depressions made or
occasioned by the drift will be destroyed by drainage. Remembering how
valleys develop it is readily understood that the heads of the
valleys will sooner or later find the lakes, and drain them if their
bottoms be not too low.
Drainage is hostile to lakes in another way. Every stream which flows
into a lake brings in more or less sediment. In the standing water this
sediment is deposited, thus tending to fill the lake basin. Both by
filling their basins and by lowering their outlets, rivers tend to the
destruction of lakes, and given time enough, they will accomplish this
result. In view of this double hostility of streams, it is not too much
to say that "rivers are the mortal enemies of lakes."
The destruction of lakes by streams is commonly a gradual process, and
so it comes about that the abundance and the condition of the undrained
areas in a drift-covered region is in some sense an index of the length
of time, reckoned in terms of erosion, which has elapsed since the drift
was deposited.
In this region there were few lakes which lasted long after the ice
disappeared. The basins of the Baraboo and Wisconsin lakes were
partly of ice, and so soon as the ice disappeared, the basins were so
nearly destroyed, and the drift dams that remained so easily eroded,
that the lakes had but a brief history,--a history that was glacial,
rather than postglacial.
The history of the little lake on the East quartzite bluff as
already pointed out, came to an end while the ice was still present.
The beds of at least two other extinct ponds or small lakes above the
level of the Baraboo are known. These are at v and w, Plate XXXVII.
They owed their origin to depressions in the drift, but the outflowing
waters have lowered their outlets sufficiently to bring them to the
condition of marshes. Both were small in area and neither was deep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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