Week 3 - Chain O' Lakes (Indiana) - Kyle Quirk

This week I decided to visit my home state of Indiana, specifically the Chain O' Lakes State Park in the northeastern part of the state in Noble County.  The northern two-thirds of Indiana was shaped by glaciers formed in Canada during the Pleistocene Epoch, specifically from 19,000 to 16,000 years ago.

As the name suggest, Chain O' Lakes State Park consists of eleven lakes in total with eight of them interconnected.  Formed by retreating glaciers, these lakes are known as kettle lakes, which also formed the bogs and rolling hills of the park and northern Indiana.

Map provided by visitindiana.com

Perennial snowpack during Pleistocene Epoch became so thick in this area that it formed continental glaciers that began to flow plastically under their own weight and away from where the great snow accumulation occurred.  The glacier flowed outward centered over present-day Hudson Bay.  Part of this glacier called the Laurentide Ice Sheet and subdivided into ice lobs due to the topography and mechanics of ice flow.  Chain O' Lakes Sate Park was most affected by the Saginaw and Huron-Erie Lobs of this sheet.

The glaciers that formed over the midwest were not always advancing, over the years they experienced warm and cold periods, causing the glacier to retreat and then advance.  In the decay of these ice sheets, sediments and land forms from other regions were left behind. This material was either outwash, sorted sand and gravel; and some was known as till, which is mixed sand, silt, boulders, and clay.  Both outwash and till deposits can be found throughout the park.

The Chain O' Lakes was formed during the meltdown of the Erie Lobe.  As the ice melted, as a result of flow stresses in the glacier, fractures became enlarged with meltwater and allowed sediment-laden streams to flow through and below the ice mass.  Till is deposited by a variety of mechanisms, around Chain O' Lakes the variety of till there is called ablation till.  This consists of sediments that were carried by the Erie Lobe as it was advancing.  

It's truly amazing what a glacier can do to the topography of a region, but even more impressive is just how much till and outwash they can leave behind.  The kettle lakes at Chain O' Lakes State Park is a great example of the power glaciers can have and something that can still be witnessed to this day.

A waterway between Sand and Bowen lakes, picture provided by visitindiana.com