To Log This Cache:
1) What type of glacial lake do you think this is?
2) Describe the nearby bank. (the edge of the lake)
3) Any signs of overflow?
4) Take a selfie at ground zero. Or if you dont want to be in the pic, take an original pic.
The Colony Farm unit of the Kalamazoo State Hospital, formerly Michigan Asylum for the Insane, began in 1888 and included a “cottage” system to house up to 350 patients. Many residents were capable of farming and household upkeep. North of Parkview Avenue and east of today’s Drake Road (formerly Colony Road and 12th Street) were four residential cottages and the 47-acre Asylum Lake (formerly Lorins Lake and McMartin Lake), with the 10-acre Little Asylum Lake located east of the buildings. The Hindes (also spelled: “Hind’s” or “Heindes”) farmhouse, Pratt Cottage and other agricultural facilities were located on the orchard property west of Drake Road, in Oshtemo Township. The hospital managed an extensive agricultural operation at this site, consisting of extensive farming, Holstein cows for milking, a chicken hatchery and a piggery. Total land mass of the Colony Farm unit at its peak operation (by the late-1940s), including property south of Parkview Avenue, amounted to approximately 795.4 acres. With other farms, orchards and gardens located throughout the Kalamazoo region, including Brook Farm, the Home Farm (vegetable gardens) and the Winchell Farm (orchard), the state hospital remained mostly self-sufficient with food provisions. The 1955—1956 Annual Report of the Kalamazoo State Hospital reports that it owned 1,388 total acres in and around Kalamazoo used for farming, institutional buildings and grounds. The hospital started reducing its property holdings during the next fiscal year.
More history of the land
The Lesson:
A glacial lake is a body of water that originates from a glacier. It typically forms at the foot of a glacier, but may form on, in, or under it. As Earth’s climate warms, the world’s glaciers are shrinking, increasing freshwater outputs to all kinds of glacial lakes. Some communities depend on glacial meltwater for seasonal irrigation or domestic use, but as the balance shifts toward more melt, this water source may not be reliable in the long term and comes with new risks.
As glaciers move, they erode the terrain under them, leaving depressions and grooves on the land. When they churn up rock and soil, they etch ridges of debris known as moraines. Most glacial lakes form when a glacier retreats and meltwater fills the hole left behind. However, natural dams, formed out of ice and terminal moraines, can also form glacial lakes. An ice dam forms when a surging glacier, which can move up to 100 times faster than an average glacier, may dam up meltwater as it closes off a valley or fjord and prevents it from draining. Dams formed by moraines can be dense and stable, holding sizable lakes behind them for years. They can also be leaky, allowing the lake to drain slowly into nearby rivers. However, prolonged melting or abrupt bursts of intense melting can wreak havoc. Too much meltwater in a short period of time might overflow a lake or burst through natural barriers, flooding lands downstream, washing away communities, and damaging roads and infrastructure. Lakes held back by moraines pose a serious threat because the porous moraine walls can destabilize easily. A rise in the amount of meltwater from glaciers increases the water pressure on the moraine barriers, which can quickly give way and threaten inundation.
Cirque Lakes
Cirques are bowl-shaped, amphitheater-like depressions that glaciers carve into mountains and valley sidewalls at high elevations.
Often, the glaciers flow up and over the lip of the cirque as gravity drives them downslope. Lakes (called tarns) often occupy these depressions once the glaciers retreat.
Paternoster Lakes
Paternoster lakes occur in a series down a formerly glaciated valley in small basins scooped out by the glacier as it retreated. The name suggests a similarity to beads on a rosary, and the lakes are often connected to one another by streams that run between them and down the valley.
Moraine Dammed Lake
Moraine-dammed glacial lakes, referring to a water body between a moraine ridge and a glacier,. These can then be divided into three subclasses; end-moraine dammed lakes, lateral moraine-dammed lakes, and moraine thaw lakes.
Moraine dammed glacial lakes are the second most common type of lake found globally, and also the most likely to fail and trigger a GLOF (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood). They are generally unvegetated, unconsolidated, and can contain ice cores.
The majority of lateral and terminal moraines that impound present-day glacial lakes were constructed during the Little Ice Age; a globally synchronous period of glacial advance extending from the 15th century to the end of the 19th century.
Generally, there is two main pathways to the formation of moraine dammed glacial lakes. Firstly, by pooling of meltwater in glacial overdeepenings between the moraine and glacier or secondly, via coalescing of surface ponds.
Bedrock and landslide dammed glacial lakes
Due to glacial recession, areas that have been overdeepened by glacial-bed erosion can become exposed. Eventually, meltwater accumulates in place of the retreating glacier termini and forms more stable lakes known as bedrock-dammed lakes. These lakes are different from moraine dammed lakes in that they are bound only by bedrock.
Unlike bedrock dams that form in existing depressions, landslide-dammed glacial lakes encompass all those impounded by new deposits due to slope movement, including landslides, rockslides/avalanches and debris-flows behind which glacial meltwater can accumulate. Similar to ice-dammed lakes formed through surging, these type of lakes are often transient due to poor cohesion of the damming material, leading to rapid erosion and lake drainage.
Subglacial Lakes
A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where liquid water can exist above the lower melting point of ice under high pressure. Over time, the overlying ice gradually melts at a rate of a few millimeters per year. Meltwater flows from regions of high to low hydraulic pressure under the ice and pools, creating a body of liquid water that can be isolated from the external environment for millions of years.
Supraglacial Lakes
Supraglacial lakes are water bodies on the surface of glaciers, generally caused by ablation. Consequently, they are most commonly located in the ablation zones of debris-covered glaciers.
As a glacier moves, supraglacial ponds can become connected to the englacial system, and thus can go through cycles of draining and refill.