How Did Water Shaped Michigan

Throughout this paper we will be discussing how water truly created the shape of Michigan. From century to century, there have been many contributing factors, such as glaciers, rivers and lakes, along with human alterations that have made the state of Michigan what it is today. In the last hundreds of millions of years many things have assisted in forming the foundation that helped developed Michigan, but what actually created the surface of Michigan into the shape that as we know it as today was not accomplished until late in the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene is relating to the first epoch of the Quaternary period, between the Pliocene and Holocene epochs.

The southern lowland region, which is called the Michigan Basin, had a layer of Paleozoic

The water that was created from the glaciers melting carried out a great deal of the leftover debris, which was sorted into different sizes such as gravel or pebbles, sand, silt or clay. All of the leftovers started to form in layers or beds in river ways, ponds, and in lakes to form what the geologist call glacio-lacustrine formations. Glacio-lacustrine formations is just a scientific phrase for a glacier melted and the materials that had been inside the glacier deposit into the lakes and rivers created by the melted

The bedrock that Michigan sits on includes sandstones. As the glaciers eroded the landscape of Michigan, sand became much more abundant, giving us our sandy beaches, sand dunes and wetlands.

When the sand blocks the ability for the water to drain from the land into the lakes, it traps the water and creates what we know today as wetlands. The sand eroded by the glaciers has also shaped Michigan’s shorelines today. Michigan obtains mostly western winds, causing the Lake Michigan coastline to have substantial dunes not only along the shoreline, but also further inland than the typical dunes.

Lake Huron on the other hand, has less dunes than Lake Michigan due to the fact that the western winds blow the sand back into the lake, making for a sandy bottom. Lake Superior has the only sand dunes on the Keweenaw Peninsula, which were blown in after the glacial departure.

Glaciers may have played a large role in the shaping of Michigan but they were not the only foundation. There are actually three different groups of factors that cause erosion: terrestrial forces, aquatic forces and human activities. There are a handful of aquatic forces that have been a part of the shaping of