Geology, vegetation, and hydrology of the 52 bog at the MEF: 12,000 years in northern Minnesota. Chapter 4.

A clear understanding of geology and landscape setting is fundamental to the interpretation of water and solute movement among landscape forms. This understanding allows us to assess how land use affects water, soils, and vegetation as well as assess the fate of acids, nutrients, trace metals, and organic compounds deposited from the atmosphere. Pleistocene Glaciation and the Holocene accumulation of peat in ice-block depressions are two primary determinants of the landscape in the recessional moraine area of north-central Minnesota, which is the setting of the Marcell Experimental Forest (MEF). We examine these two processes using studies of lacustrine and peat sediment accumulation, ice-block paleobotany, mineral-soil development, and a review of Wisconsin Glaciation at the MEF.