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In order to count this Earthcache as a find, you must complete the following tasks and email the answers to me.
1. What is the elevation? What affect does elevation have on a river’s flow?
2. Estimate the width of the Red River. How do you think the width at this location compares to the width of the river found further to the north? Why?
3. Describe the confluence with the Otter Tail and the Bois De Sioux Rivers to create the Red River.
4. What evidence of erosion do you see in this area? What would account for that?
5. Explain what is on the Headwaters Monument.
This Earthcache is located at Headwaters Park, just on the Minnesota side of the border. As the name implies, this is the location of the headwaters of the Red River. Headwaters Park offers a boat landing and dock and picnic shelters. A “Friendship Sculpture” also commemorates the headwaters. Enjoy!
In geology, “headwaters” refers to the place from which the water in a river or stream originates. Joined here by the Otter Tail and the Bois De Sioux Rivers, the Red River is formed. It is at this spot that the Red River begins its 549 mile journey northward to Lake Winnipeg in Canada. From Lake Winnipeg, it continues into the Hudson Bay, which drains into the Atlantic Ocean. The Red River is the longest north flowing river in the United States.
The Wisconsin glaciation occurred somewhere between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. During this last ice age, the northern part of North America was covered by a glacier. As the ice sheet started to break apart and melt, it sent strong and fast-moving streams of water southward. This water dammed up behind a barrier of glacial debris known as the Big Stone Moraine and pooled into a lake larger than all the Great Lakes combined.
About 13,000 years ago, this gigantic lake, once known as Lake Agassiz, covered present-day Manitoba, western Ontario, eastern Saskatchewan, northern Minnesota, and eastern North Dakota. At its greatest extent, the lake covered up to 440,000 square kilometers--roughly the size of Uzbekistan or Iraq. Lake Agassiz was much larger than any current lake in the world, including the Caspian Sea, and held more water than contained by all lakes in the world today. At its maximum, Lake Agassiz was over 300 feet deep--where downtown Fargo and Moorhead sit today.
The lake drained at various times and in all directions. It drained south through the Traverse Gap into the Glacial River Warren, east through present-day Lake Nipigon (then Lake Kelvin) to present-day Lake Superior, and west through the Mackenzie River through the Yukon Territory and Alaska. It is believed that around 13,000 BP there was a major flood of the Lake, causing it to drain through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean.
Climatologists believe this flood and draining may have been the cause of the Younger Dryas stadial. The Younger Dryas stadial, also known as the Big Freeze, was a geologically brief period of time (about 1300 years) in which the climate returned to ice age conditions. The return of ice for sometime offered a bit of a reprieve for the Lake. About 9900 years ago, after the ice sheet retreated north of the Canadian border and slowly melted, Lake Agassiz refilled. These events of Lake Agassiz had a significant impact on climate, sea level, and possible early human civilization.
The majority of the final drainage of Lake Agassiz occurred within a very short amount of time--about a year. A recent study by Turney and Brown links this rapid drainage (and subsequent global seal level rise of about one meter) to the expansion of agriculture in Europe. This study also suggests that this drainage and previous flooding may also account for various flood myths of prehistoric cultures, including the Biblical flood.
The last major shift in the drainage of Lake Agassiz took place about 8400 years before present. During this time, the lake took up its current watershed and slowly drained into the Hudson Bay. Over the next 1000 years, the Lake drained completely.
The Red River started to form about 9000 years ago in the Fargo-Moorhead area as Lake Agassiz drained northward. The Red River flows across the flat lakebed of Lake Agassiz. The Red River Valley, which is one of the flattest landscapes on Earth, is situated on this ancient lakebed. From its origin at Breckenridge, Minnesota to the international border near Emerson, Manitoba, the Red River Valley slopes only about one foot per mile. The river, which flows slowly and is small most of the time, does not have the energy to cut a deep gorge. Instead, it curves and beds across the low-lying lands as it moves north. Consequently, when the river rises, the water has nowhere to go, except to spread across the old lakebed and flood. Heavy snows or rains on saturated or frozen soil havef caused a number of catastrophic floods, which often are made worse by the fact that snowmelt starts in the south (where it is warmer), and the waters flowing north are often dammed or slowed by ice. These periodic floods have the effect of refilling, in part, the ancient Lake Agassiz.
NOT A LOGGING REQUIREMENT: Feel free to post pictures of your group at the area or the area itself - I love looking at the pictures.
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