Wisconsin: Physical

History

Wisconsin Ice Age 110,000 to 12,000 years ago Most recent advance of North American Laurentide ice sheet Several miles thick in places Its advance and retreat carved out Wisconsin’s geography Land bridge in Bering Strait in this era allowed migration

of humans into North America

The Great Lakes: Gift of the Glacier

Retreating glaciers carve out five huge inland seas

Will become source of fresh water and fish

Will become a major transportation route

Glaciation

Glaciation Drumlin: Oval teardrop-shaped hills formed under the glacial ice near the advancing front of a glacier.

Glaciation Erratic: Boulders and large rocks carried by glaciers and deposited on the surface of the land after the ice melted.

Glaciation Esker: A long, narrow ridge of coarse gravel deposited by a stream flowing in an ice-walled valley or tunnel in a melting glacier.

Glaciation Kame: A conical-shaped hill of sand and gravel that was formed by glacial meltwater swirling into a vertical shaft in the glacier.

GlaciationKettle: A depression formed by the melting of a large block of glacial ice that was partially or completely buried. Some kettles hold water to form kettle lakes.

Glaciation Moraine: Jumbled hills of unsorted, unstratified glacial debris found at the sides or front of a glacier

Driftless vs Glaciated

Wisconsin Watersheds Watershed: An area of land where all the water drains off

the land into the same place or location

Great Lakes Watershed

MississippiWatershed

Physical Areas

of Wisconsin