Water's Impact On Shaping Michigan

Water’s Impact on Shaping Michigan

When thinking of Michigan, one might think of pristine blue water in the form of lakes, rivers and streams. Michigan boasts not only bordering four of the five great lakes but it also contains more than 11,000 inland lakes and more than 12,000 miles of rivers and streams (Michigan). Throughout history, water has played a key role in not only the settlements and economies of civilizations in Michigan, but it has also physically shaped the state in more ways than most people realize. The water cycle contains all of the water that exists in, on, or above the earth. It is constantly moving and has been for billions of years. The earth used to be a large sphere made of magma, the water that was inside of the
About two million years ago we entered into the Pleistocene Epoch, an ice age that lasted until about 12,000 years ago and covered all of North America in over 6,000 feet of snow and ice. During this time, the temperatures went up and down causing the glaciers to melt or to expand, often times causing them to move. This carved the landscape of Michigan (Why). Glacial erosion can happen in two primary ways, the first is called plucking, and this happens when rocks and debris stick to the underside of a glacier and then are carried off with it. The second is called abrasion, this is more of what we might think on when we think of erosion, it’s what happens when two pieces of hard material scrape against each other. It is described almost as sanding the earth with a very large piece of sandpaper. When glaciers pick up a boulders or other debris and move it to another place, this is called glacial transportation. Often this transported debris has a different make up than the bedrock on which it has been distributed (Glacial erosion). These accumulations of glacial debris are called a moraines. Moraines are fairly common in Michigan and they are formed when a glacier either pauses for a good amount of time or begins to retreat. One remarkable moraine in Michigan is the Port Huron Moraine that is pictured below. Of course moraines are not the only landform in Michigan that has been shaped by glaciers (Moraines). There are many more landforms that are formed by glaciers. One in particular are drumlins. Drumlins are long features that can be up to 5 kilometers long and 50 meters high. One end usually has a very steep incline while the other end tapers off in an easy incline .The main theory on exactly how drumlins are formed is essentially that when a glacier becomes too overloaded with sediment and debris, that is deposits it in the form of a