12 environment loss during this period was gained through the increase of earth materials from melting glaciers. The gravel sourced from the gravel fields below the layers of topsoil, is mined in the Fox Valley in the present.4 The Wisconsin Glaciation has benefited local populations with its immense supply of gravel. The success brought from this has been improving the use of the land compared to its state before the glaciation, frozen flatland. The melting glaciers improved Illinois’s landscape and supplied the materials that shape the present Fox River. The recovery of Illinois’s tundra resulted in the Fox River bioregion becoming further inhabitable. The Woodfordian period, dated 15000 years ago, is a stage of the late Wisconsin Glaciation. During this time, the land had an extremely thin surface layer of soil. The soil was coarse, brittle, lacked minerals, and contained little to no fossils, with yellow and brown pigment. While the soil after the Pleistocene Epoch was recorded with large moraines, a variety of minerals, fossils such as snail shells, silt, and dark-brown pigment, with soft soil.5 It was conclusive that around the Fox River, there was a similar drift in sand and clay within the soil. McHenry and Kane counties share the same composition of moraines in the ground.6 With this similarity, the improvement of the soil was done by the glaciers because of the way the water traveled as it formed the Fox River. The increasing variety of natural resources contained in the top layer of soil is a sign of the soil recovering from its tundra state, where the soil was frozen and contained no richness that would improve its quality and capability in the agricultural industry of society. Healthier soil possesses the ability to absorb and filter rainfall without risking erosion. With richer soil, the Fox River bioregion 4 Mechanic, Gary. Our Waters, Our Fox. Friends of the Fox River. (Dean Tripp, 2017) https://friendsofthefoxriver.org/2017/05/14/our-waters-our-fox/ 5 Frye, John C, H B Willman, Meyer Ruben, and Robert Black. Definition of Wisconsinan Stage - USGS. (U.S. Geological Survey. U.S. Department of the Interior, 1894). pp E9-E10. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1274e/report.pdf 10 Mechanic, Gary. Our Waters, Our Fox. 6 Kempton, John P. Subsurface Stratigraphy of the Pleistocene Deposits of Central Northern Illinois, (Urbana, Il: Illinois State Geological Survey, 1963), pp 19-20.
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