Main Blog

This is my blog concerning my work with ice age glaciers. The main blog is www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com . If you like this blog, you may also like my geology blog, www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com and my Niagara area natural history blog, www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com .

NOTICE: This is a blog with the older formatting. To see all of the postings on the blog listed, look at the list of postings on the right and click on the bottom one, other than the archives. This will display the rest of the postings. The final posting on the blog is "The Slopes Of Tonawanda And Buffalo".

What Caused The Ice Ages?

Here is one of those questions of the ages. On a roughly regular basis, the earth grows colder until it enters a so-called "ice age" maybe 8,000 years in duration.Then, it grows warmer until the ice age ends and a warm period of about 15,000 years follows. After this, the cycle repeats over and over again. These ice ages began somewhat suddenly in the earth's history.

The question is: why? There are a number of theories that you may read about in the article about the ice ages on www.wikipedia.org if you wish. Many believe that it is factors outside the earth that are responsible for the ice ages such as variations in the output of the sun or perturbations in the orbit of the earth around the sun.

I just cannot believe this. I have long been certain that there must be some cyclic process on earth that bears the primary responsibility, for one thing no signs of any alternating cold periods have been found on other planets. I have written about this previously, but today I would like to introduce a complete theory of the ice ages.

The ice ages, and the massive glaciers that it produces, does a lot to shape the landscape of much of the earth's surface. During the warm periods about 10% of the earth is covered by ice, but this increases to about 30% during the ice ages.

Glaciers begin to form when it gets cold enough so that the snow of one winter has not completely melted by the time the following winter begins. Snow begins to pile up year after year, decade after decade and, century after century. The snow in the lower levels is compressed into ice by the weight of the snow above it. The eventual result is a massive sheet of ice stretching across the landscape and two or three kilometers in height. When an object is large enough, it is affected by the rotation of the earth and the glaciers are pulled toward the equator and somewhat to the east by the earth's rotation.

The white surface of the snow and ice reflects a lot more solar radiation back to space than the darker ground beneath. Thus, we get a cooling spiral started which forms still more ice. This ice does not flow through the watershed back to the sea, as it would if it were rainfall. This causes a drop in sea level of maybe a couple of hundred meters, and leaves a lot of land connections that were not there during the warm periods such as the land bridge across the Bering Strait and a land connection from mainland Asia to Japan.

It is fairly easy to explain why the ice ages began. We know that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas, and causes the earth to warm. Basically, the earth absorbs radiation from the sun each day and grows warm. The earth re-radiates this radiation back into space, but does so at different wavelengths than the incoming radiation. A greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, causes the earth to get warmer by allowing the incoming wavelengths through but blocking the outgoing wavelengths so that heat is trapped.

Much of the structure of plants is carbon. Leaves use energy from the sun to split molecules of carbon dioxide, releasing the oxygen back into the air and using the carbon to build the structure of the plant. Dead plants may become buried or submerged before they can decay. This is how limestone (calcium carbonate), coal and, oil form over long periods of time, and when this happens carbon is removed from the air.

Could it be that the earth was once warmer than it is today because of a higher level of carbon dioxide in the air, but it began to cool when enough carbon became buried as the dead plants which formed coal and oil? This could have reached a point which got the ice ages underway. Of course, we are in the process of reversing this by burning fossil fuels and bringing about global warming.

We have seen how the ice ages began. But that still does not explain why the earth gets colder and than warmer in a recurring cycle. However, I have noticed a simple explanation.

We know that plants pull carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow. The carbon is incorporated into the structures of the plants, while the oxygen that it is separated from is circulated back into the air. When the plant dies and decays, the carbon is oxidized and returns to the air as carbon dioxide.

Now, here is the question to ponder: What about the roots of the plants? The structure of the dead plant that is above ground decays back into the carbon dioxide from which it was formed, but the roots remain under the ground. The roots will also decay, but most of the carbon of which they are composed will be blocked from returning to the air and will remain in the ground.

This is the reason that plowing the soil releases so much carbon dioxide, the carbon from long-decayed roots of dead plants is being released back into the air. My hypothesis is that, when enough carbon is removed from the air as plant roots, the earth cools enough to bring about another ice age.

It is no secret that the most fertile lands on earth are those over which glaciers have moved during the ice ages. The reason is that the nutrients that are vital to plants tend to get lost in the soil over time, and the plowing done by a moving sheet of ice brings the nutrients back up. But if this glacial plowing brings back nutrients to near the surface, think of how much carbon dioxide it must release also. All of the carbon from the decayed roots of countless generations of dead plants would suddenly be released, just as if the soil were being plowed with a giant plow.

The arctic regions are not the only source of glaciers during ice ages. The same effect takes place as vast sheets of ice form by the glacial process in mountainous regions, due to the higher and colder air. We saw this in the posting "Mountains And Glaciers", on this blog.

The next factor that comes into play is earthquakes. Most mountains, unless of volcanic origin, are formed by tectonic collisions that are still, more or less, taking place. Thus, the mountainous regions that host extensive glaciers during the ice ages are especially prone to earthquakes, which do not stop just because it is an ice age.

What happens is that the earthquakes jolt glaciers loose so that they slide down to the lowlands below, and in doing so plow the soil to great depth so that thouands of years of carbon dioxide from decayed plant roots is released into the air. This causes the earth to warm because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and this ultimately brings about the end of the ice age.

This process brings about a spiral. The plowing of adjacent lowlands by glaciers from mountains, knocked loose by earthquakes during the ice ages, also brings nutrients to the surface. This makes the area fertile so that plants will flourish during the ensuing warm period, and will leave even more carbon in the ground as the roots of the plant after the end of it's life.

Just by looking at a map, it is easy to see the link between earthquakes in mountainous regions and glacial activity in the lowlands below. Here is a map link: www.maps.google.com .

Argentina has a vast continental shelf, which could have easily been formed as the land was carved away by moving glacial ice, that is about as large as the country itself. Argentina happens to be just east of the Andes Mountains, which undergo the extremely powerful earthquakes of a subduction zone such as the 2010 Chile earthquake. Momentum from the earth's rotation would pull the loosened glaciers eastward, across Argentina.

Greece is also vulnerable to earthquakes. The Aegean Islands are on a shallow shelf that has been mostly carved away by glacial activity. Crete appears to be the furthest extent of the shelf. Glaciers from the mountains to the northwest, pulled by the earth's rotation to the south and east after having been shaken loose by earthquakes during the ice ages, carved away most of the landscape and left the islands.

Italy, as well as Greece, is on a tectonic plate that is vulnerable to earthquakes. The Adriatic Sea is actually a shallow glacial raceway, formed where the ground has been carved away by glacial movement toward the south and east through the gap between the mountains of Italy and those of the former Yugoslavia. Glaciers from the mountains all around, especially the Alps, were shaken loose by earthquakes and pulled by the momentum of the earth's rotation to the south and east.

The Persian Gulf region is the site of heavy glacial activity, which plowed the ground to produce what is known as the Fertile Crescent and eroded away what is now the shallow Persian Gulf in much the same way as the Adriatic Sea. The glaciers came from the nearby Zagros Mountains of Iran, which is very vulnerable to earthquakes, and were pulled by the momentum of the earth's rotation to the south and east.

The mountains of south China must have hosted extensive glaciers during the ice ages, and are also very vulnerable to earthquakes. I pointed out the route of the Red River in "Mountains And Glaciers". A wide area was carved away by the glaciers, knocked loose by earthquakes and pulled by the earth's roation to the south and east, leaving Hainan Island intact and leaving Vietnam with a wide and shallow continental shelf.

North China is generally less vulnerable to earthquakes than the south. But it appears logical that earthquakes jolted mountain glacial ice loose during the ice ages to carve the shallow extension of the Yellow Sea known as the Bo Hai, near the cities of Dalian and Tianjin.

In contrast, the Rocky Mountains of North America are not known for earthquake activity and no evidence of such glacial activity is to be seen nearby. Neither is there any sign of large-scale glacial activity around the Adirondack Mountains of New York State or the mountains of New England. The area is very mildly seismic, but no large earthquakes.

The area around the Appalachian Mountains do not display any signs of such glacial activity, except for the pair of Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. But these were formed by glacial movement being focused by the curve in the Appalachians across Pennsylvania, and are nowhere near the scale of the glacial activity described above.

So, there can be no doubt that there is extensive glacial activity that can be seen to have taken place around mountains that would have hosted extensive glaciers during the ice ages and that are vulnerable to earthquakes. Since the most fertile areas in the world are those which have been plowed by glaciers, and since plowing soil is known to release large mounts of carbon dioxide into the air, we can safely assume that plowing by glaciers releases carbon in the soil that has built up during the warm periods between the ice ages, and that this is ultimately what brings the ice age to it's end until the carbon is put back into the soil by the remaining roots of dead plants during the warm period, and this ultimately brings on the next ice age. The plants thrive in this area because the glacial plowing that released the carbon also brought buried nutrients to near the surface.

How else can the recurring cycle of ice ages and warm periods be explained? Isn't this the most logical explanation? Isn't it amazing that without earthquakes there would be a continuous ice age?

Weather Patterns During The Ice Ages

What about weather patterns during the ice ages? If the temperature dropped dramatically and the earth's ice cover increased, it would certainly change the weather patterns that we are familiar with today.

I have noticed how we can take a look into the weather patterns during the ice ages just by looking at a map.

The Rhone Valley is wide and broad and runs north-south across southeastern France between the Massif Central and the Alps. The valley is parallel to the French-Italian border and extends from the city of Dijon through Lyon to Marseilles on the Mediterranean coast.

The Mistral is the wind which passes through the Rhone Valley from the north. The wind can, at times affect lands across the sea such as Sardinia and even north Africa. You can read more about the Mistral if you wish by going to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and entering in "Mistral (wind)".

My hypothesis is that the Mistral must have been far more powerful during the ice ages than it is today, and that gives us a clue as to the weather patterns as a whole during the ice ages.

Let's briefly review the formation of glaciers during the ice ages. Glaciers begin to build when the temperature drops low enough so that the snow of one winter has not completely melted when snow begins to fall the following winter. This means that snow continues to pile up, year after year and century after century.

Snow is compacted into ice by the weight of the snow above it. Eventually, a vast and thick sheet of ice has formed that is wide enough to be affected by the rotation of the earth. The ice sheet is pulled southward, toward the equator, and along with the eastward rotation of the earth. (For more on this, see "New Discoveries Concerning Glaciers" on the glacier blog). All the while, the white snow and reflective ice contributes to the cooling spiral by reflecting solar energy back into space instead of absorbing it.

In the posting "Mountains And Glaciers" on this blog, I explained how glaciers can form much further south than they ordinarily would at ground level if there are mountains with sufficient altitude that can provide a suitable site for glacier formation.

Now, let's go across the Mediterranean Sea from the Rhone Valley to the mountains of Algeria. Here is a map link, http://www.maps.google.com/ , or you can follow along in a physical geography world atlas.

South of the city of Algiers, there is a lake in the Atlas Mountains. The name of the lake in Arabic is Chott El Hodna. Moving south and east, to the south of the mountain range on lower ground is Chott Melrhir, Chott El Gharsa, Chott Jerid and, Chott Fejaj.

This line of lakes extends from northwest to southeast, just what we would expect if the lakes were formed by glacial movement out of the mountains and guided by the earth's rotation, and end at the Golfe de Gabes on the east coast of Tunisia. The directional alignment of the string of lakes clearly shows this glacial movement and the Golfe de Gabes also appears as an outlet of this glacial movement to the sea.

Notice that Chott El Hodna, in the mountains south of Algiers, is on a straight line with the Rhone Valley if it were extended across the Mediterranean Sea. There must have been very heavy snowfall in the Altas Mountains to form the glaciers which carved this string of lakes. Since the area is mostly dry today, other than these lakes, my conclusion is that the Mistral was much more powerful and consistent during the ice ages than it is today.

Now, let's go far away, to Buffalo, NY. The thing that made me think of this scenario is the lake-effect snow that Buffalo is known for during the winter. The prevailing wind in the area is from the west, so that it sweeps across the length of Lake Erie before arriving at Buffalo. When the lake is warm but the air passing over it is cold, it picks up more water than it can hold.

When the air reaches the eastern end of the lake and passes over land, which loses heat faster than water and so is colder, the air becomes unable to hold the water vapor (vapour) that it has collected. The result is all-too-familiar to residents of the area, tons and tons of snow dropped on Buffalo and the Southern Tier of New York State, down to around the Pennsylvania state line.

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and the only one that freezes over, and when it does the lake-effect snow ceases because the ice covering the lake prevents further evaporation. There is actually more snowfall in central New York State than there is is Buffalo because they get their lake-effect snow from Lake Ontario, which is too deep to freeze over during the winter.

The basin of the Mediterranean Sea is too deep, and too far south, to freeze over during the ice ages. A similar phenomenon to Buffalo's lake-effect snow happened here during the ice ages. The powerful, cold Mistral passed over the warmer sea. It picked up a lot of water until it reached the Atlas Mountains, south of Algiers.

Altitude was also a factor here, higher and thinner air can hold less water. A vast amount of snow was dropped in the mountains. This snow formed the glaciers, which were moved by the rotation of the earth to form the string of lakes that we can see on the map today.

Glaciation And Building Construction

You can tell a lot about the movement of glaciers over an area during the ice ages, the most recent of which ended about 12,000 years ago, just by observing the traditional construction in the area.

In some areas, there are many loose stones to be found in fields and just under the ground. Whenever farmers plow (plough) their fields, or other digging is done, such stones are uncovered and are used for building walls, chimneys and, entire structures.

Such loose stones are found when an advancing glacier, at the beginning of an ice age, chips stone off a mountain or escarpment of some type, carries it along, and then leaves it at the end of the ice age when the ice melts. These loose stones are very often rounded, which is the result of flowing water from the melting of the glacial ice and from any temporary lakes that may have formed.

In one ice age after another, this process is repeated until there is enough loose stone to build entire towns from. This does not, of course, include flat stones which are taken from stone quarries. That stone is from the underlying rock strata and has nothing to do with glaciation.

Even if an area is covered by ice during the ice ages, this mass deposit of loose stone will not take place unless the moving ice first passes through mountains, or other exposed stone, that it can chip away at. Much loose stone is found all across Britain because the ice passed through such mountains as those of Scotland and the Pennines. This concept enables us to track glacial movement simply by looking at the type of typical traditional architecture in a given area.

Norway is mountainous and far to the north, so that it would certainly be involved with glaciation. Yet, traditional Norwegian architecture is focused much more on wood than stone. This confirms what I wrote in "New Discoveries In Europe Concerning Glaciers", on the glacial blog.

Ice moving from the northwest bounced off the Norwegian Mountains. The mountains themselves would have produced glaciers, which moved southeastward toward the border with Sweden. But this ice did not come across much rock to chip away at and carry with it. If the main glacial movement had gone right through the Norwegian Mountains, it would have chipped off a considerable amount of loose stone, and this would be seen today in the traditional architecture of the region. Further south, in northern Europe, there is also less rounded stone to be seen in the traditional architecture than there is in Britain, and this also fits this scenario.

Ireland had it's landscape just as swept by glacial ice as Britain. The reason that loose, rounded stone is less to be found in it's architecture can easily be seen on a map. The movement of ice toward Ireland from the northwest did not pass by exposed stone, as the ice that crossed Britain did.

Very large boulders can also be moved by glacial ice. Near Niagara Falls, on Goat Island, there is such a boulder. The stone of which the boulder is composed does not match that of any stone in the area. But in northern Ontario, there is a native stone that matches that of the boulder. It was moved to it's present location, far to the south, by the ice age glacial movement.

In Appreciation Of The Canadian Shield

The Canadian Shield is the expansive area of dense rock that underlies approximately the eastern half of Canada. I think it is appropriate to point out how very important to us this mass of rock is. I encourage Canadian readers especially to read the article about the shield on http://www.wikipedia.org/ .

I can show you what the majority of Canada would look like if it were not for the Canadian Shield, and it is not an appealing sight. On http://www.maps.google.com/ , you can see a vast area of shallow sea all around northwestern Europe. This includes the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. There is also an area of shallow sea to the west of Ireland that is about as big as Ireland itself.

This area of shallow sea was once all dry land, but it has been carved away by the movement of glaciers during the ice ages. All that remains today of this former land is Britain, Ireland and, Scandinavia. These remained intact because they were shielded by mountains. We can only imagine what the world would be like today if this were still land.

The reason this happened is that Europe does not have a Canadian Shield like Canada does. This underlying layer of rock prevented the glaciers from carving the land away during the ice ages. There is a large area of northern Canada that is not covered by the shield. This was also once land, but has been carved away by glaciers into a shallow sea, in the same way as the former northwestern Europe. This area is known today as Hudson Bay. If not for the Canadian Shield, this is what would have happened to virtually all of eastern Canada.

It is so named because it's shape resembles a shield, but the Canadian Shield truly is a shield in every sense of the word. Canada's national anthem refers to "standing on guard" for the country, and there is nothing that this better refers to than the Canadian Shield.

Sea Level During The Ice Ages

One thing that does not get discussed very much, but must have had a profound effect on the world that we have today, is the effect of the ice ages on sea level. Consider the following facts: The earth's surface is about 72% water. Glacial ice during the ice ages might have been 2-3 kilometers in thickness. The northern ice cap covers about 10% of the earth's surface today, but that increases to about 30% during the ice ages.

This can only mean that there must have been a drastic drop in worldwide sea levels during the ice ages of from maybe two hundred to five hundred meters. Shallow seas and continental shelves all over the world became dry land.

There is one really curious thing about the extent of glaciation during the ice ages. Almost all major glaciation on land during these times occurs in the northern hemisphere. Even though Antarctica is supposedly the coldest place on earth, there seems to be little of the glacial effects on Australia and southern Africa that can be seen all over North America and Europe. There are some glacial effects on the east coast of Australia, for example, but these are from locally-produced mountain glaciers.

I find that this fact reveals a lot about what goes on in the oceans during the ice ages.

My belief is that glaciers moving to lower latitudes from the polar regions during ice ages can only cross land, not deep water, or they would start to melt. Wide stretches of deep ocean is why Antarctic glaciers do not reshape southern lands in the same way as happens in the north. The ocean between Antarctica and other southern continents is simply too deep to be transformed into land by the water redistribution so that glaciers can cross.

This must mean that the shallow water all around northern Europe becomes land during ice ages. On a physical map of the area, it is easy to see the deep underwater trench all around the southern part of Norway, carved by the movement of vast icebergs. This raises the question of what effect this has on living things in these shallow waters in high latitudes. There seems to be little documentation concerning this question that I can find.

I reason that there must have been a mass exodus of fish and other marine life away from these shallow northern seas that cease to be to the deeper water that remains ocean. But deeper water and shallow water are altogether different environments for marine life. The edible plants at the base of the food chain grow on the sea floor and so are much more accessible in shallow seas. There is practically no plant life below about 180 meters depth because the sunlight on which plants depend cannot penetrate any deeper.

This can only mean that large fish populations in shallow water simply do not survive the move to deeper water that does not become land during the ice ages. We do know that the reason there is a wider variety of plants in North America than there is in northern Europe is because when the glaciers moved southward, some species of plant were blocked from retreating southward by the Alps Mountains. My hypothesis is that marine life must have been affected in a similar way but I can find little writing about this.

Another effect that the removing of shallow seas during the ice ages would have had is to increase the salinity of nearby deeper water that remained ocean. This is because the salt would become more concentrated. This must also have had an effect on life in the sea that I cannot find documented.

Another factor that may have contributed to bringing the ice ages to an end is the effect of the much lower sea level on the precipitation that is necessary to maintain glaciers. Some glacial ice is always melting, but is replaced by more falling snow which gets compressed into ice. If the surface area of the world's oceans is vastly reduced by this redistribution of water then that must mean much less water evaporating to eventually fall as snow to replenish the glaciers.

It might also seem that, since the oceans absorb a lot of carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas, with less ocean surface there would be more CO2 in the air to warm the planet and end the ice age. While this may be a factor also, this lack of absorption would be at least partially made up for by the growth of land plants, and their absorption of CO2, on dry areas of former sea bed. There must have been trees and plants and animals on vast areas of land that have since returned to the sea.

Have you ever wondered how people in prehistoric times got to all of the places on earth that they did, without sea-worthy ships? If the sea level of the world's oceans underwent this drastic drop, many isolated lands would then become accessible.

Asians could walk from Siberia to Alaska to populate the western hemisphere and become the native Indians, from the Eskimos to the Inca, over time. Other Asians could walk to Japan and settle there before they were once again cut off by the rising waters at the end of the ice age. Britain and Ireland were a part of Europe without the North or Baltic Seas. One could easily walk from India to Sri Lanka, or across the dry seabed of what is now the Persian Gulf. Prehistoric Greeks could walk to any of the Aegean islands. Italy was joined to Europe to the east over a dry Adriatic Sea. Florida and Mexico's Yucutan Peninsula had much more land than they do today.

Other formerly isolated lands were, if not directly connected by dry land, were brought close enough to settled lands to be crossed by people on primitive rafts or floating logs. This is how Aboriginals got to Australia when the Sunda and Arfura shelves became dry land, joining the islands of Indonesia together and bringing an expanded Australia within rafting distance.

This explains why no prehistoric people ever reached Iceland. It has no original inhabitants, but only the descendents of much later European settlers. It is because the waters around Iceland are deep.

There were migrations of animals also, but this is not the same thing as what I will call "Hemisphere Pairing". The eastern and western hemispheres were once together geologically, and we can see this in the similarities in some animal species which developed separately after the tectonic split.

There is a lot of similarities between camels on one side of the world, and llamas in South America. There are lions in Africa, and cougars in North America. Likewise, there are leopards and cheetahs in Africa and related jaguar in South America. There are monkeys in both hemispheres, but only those in the western hemisphere can grasp with their tails. The reason that wolves are found in both hemispheres is that they can withstand the cold enough to journey from Siberia to Alaska.

The last ice age ended in prehistoric times, about 12,000 years ago. But we can see how it has influenced human civilization. Civilization began in the Middle East and to some extent in the Far East. Notice that the Middle East is mostly desert, which is relatively free of disease in comparison with jungle, and also far enough south to be away from most of the glaciation during the ice age. I do not believe this to be coincidence.

New York's New Finger Lake

Letchworth State Park, in western New York State to the southwest of Rochester, hosts what is referred to as "The Grand Canyon of the East". This canyon, and the sorrounding green of the park, can be easily seen on the satellite imagery of http://www.maps.google.com/ .

The Genesee River flows northward through the canyon and over several waterfalls, including one that is higher than Niagara Falls. So, this canyon inevitably gets compared to the gorge at Niagara and is presumed to have been formed in a similar way to this and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which was carved out of the layers of sandstone by the Colorado River.

Today, I would like to introduce another point of view on the formation of the canyon at Letchworth State Park.

The canyon is actually one of the Finger Lakes of central New York State. But due to the elevation and slope of the land, the canyon is not filled with water like the Finger Lakes to the east, but rather a river runs through it.

These deep and elongated lakes were carved out of the rock by glacial movement from the north during the ice ages. The area must have been the site of very concentrated glacial activity because of the presence of the Niagara Escarpment to the west and the Adirondack Mountains to the east. These two permanent features acted as the sides of a "funnel" to channel a powerful glacial movement across the area where the Finger Lakes are located.

Just look on the map at the location and directional alignment of the canyon at Letchworth State Park, relative to the Finger Lakes located just to the east. The canyon fits right into the pattern of these lakes, and I am certain that it was formed in the same way rather than being carved by the river that flows through it. There was a glacial thrust channeled by the Niagara Escarpment, and going somewhat behind it, that carved this canyon out of the rock over successive ice ages and also the smaller Silver Lake to the west. The Genesee River found it's way into the canyon later.

At Niagara Falls, there is a valley in the rock layers which guided the flowing water to form the falls and the gorge, this is the valley that I named "The Niagara Valley" and is described in the posting on the Niagara natural history blog by that name. But at Letchworth, there is no such valley to guide the river which supposedly carved the canyon over time.

I usually do not like the word "impossible", so let's just say that it is extremely unlikely that the flowing waters of the Genesee River carved this canyon out of the rock at Letchworth, as is commonly believed. For one thing, water is not neat when it carves it's way through soil or limestone. Neither the Grand Canyon nor the Niagara Gorge are anything like neatly carved. But look at some of the photos on the article titled "Letchworth State Park" on http://www.wikipedia.org/ . In one photo, the rock wall of the canyon is so neatly cut that it looks like a cake cut by a knife. Ice is much neater than flowing water, and that is definitely the work of ice and not water.

You can see in the satellite imagery that the river actually meanders from one side of the canyon to the other, and that would not be the case if the river had carved the canyon.

Consider the sheer volume of water that carved the Niagara Gorge. The flow of water through Niagara is probably a thousand times that of the Genesee River, which supposedly carved this Letchworth Canyon. It is true that there was a lot of water around when the glaciers melted at the end of the ice ages, but that water supply lasted for only a brief time. There are other features around Rochester that were shaped by this rush of glacial meltwater, described in "Water Inlets Of The Niagara Escarpment Bulge" on this blog, but there is nothing anywhere else in the area like this canyon.

I think that we can safely consider the canyon at Letchworth State Park to actually be one of the Finger Lakes except that, due to the slope and altitude of the terrain, it is not filled with water like the other Finger Lakes, but rather a river runs through it.

Lake Chautauqua And The Niagara Escarpment

I have noticed a relationship between the Niagara Escarpment and Lake Chautauqua that I cannot find has been pointed out before. This relationship does a lot to illustrate how the movement of ice age glaciers is affected by obstacles such as an escarpment. As always when I write about geology and natural history in the general area where I live, I try to write in such a way that the reader will not need to be familiar with the area to understand it.

Here is a map link, or you can use an atlas: www.maps.google.com

If you do happen to be familiar with the western New York State area, your first reaction might be to wonder what picturesque Lake Chautauqua, in the southeast corner of the state, could possibly have to do with the Niagara Escarpment, which is nearly a two hour drive away. To see what the two have to do with each other, the lake is actually a creation of the escarpment, let's look at a map showing all of the escarpment.

The Niagara Escarpment is a very prominent feature of the landscape which can easily be seen on any map of the northeastern U.S. Start with the Door Peninsula, which separates Green Bay in Wisconsin from Lake Michigan. This peninsula is part of an arc that continues across northern Michigan to Manitoulin Island, which separates Georgian Bay from Lake Huron, to the Bruce Peninsula of Ontario.

The escarpment continues southward across southern Ontario until it changes direction at Hamilton. From there, it continues eastward to Rochester where it terminates. Three cities; Hamilton, St. Catharines and, Lockport, NY are built right on the Niagara Escarpment, with part of the city on the higher level and the rest below the escarpment.

I have written extensively about the escarpment in numerous postings on the geology, glacial and, Niagara natural history blogs. The posting "The Niagara Escarpment And The Meteor", on the geology blog www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com , explains my theory of the origin of the escarpment. It is not a fault line as it may appear but the result of uneven erosion of the limestone layers over millions of years. "America's Escarpment State", on this blog, explains how the upper Great Lakes were shaped by the interaction of glacial ice with the escarpment.

The escarpment is not simply a higher level above a lower level. It is actually in the form of a sawtooth, with the upper level gradually getting lower in elevation as we move away from the brink of the escarpment.

There are many elongated lakes in western New York State, carved by the movement of glacial ice during the ice ages. The well-known and scenic Finger Lakes can be easily explained by looking at the map. We know that the Niagara Escarpment ends at Rochester and that there are the Adirondack Mountains in the eastern part of the state. These two barriers had the effect of a funnel in that they concentrated the movement of ice into the space between them.

This especially heavy concentration of glacial ice carved the Finger Lakes. In fact in the posting on this blog, "New York's New Finger Lake" I explained my reasons for believing that the gorge at Letchworth State Park was actually formed as one of the Finger Lakes.

The thing that is puzzling about Lake Chautauqua is it's directional alignment, which is from northwest to southeast, so that it does not match the alignment of any of the other lakes at all. It is deep and narrow lake, typical of those carved by glacial ice, and is actually a double lake with two basins.

It is not difficult to see how the lake was formed, there is a broad rounded ridge between it and Lake Erie with Westfield on one side and Mayville on the other side. Ice coming down over that ridge, which was formed by the tectonic collision which formed the Appalachians, carved the lake.

Now, let's go back to the Niagara Escarpment. My hypothesis is that, while the outside of the escarpment formed a natural barrier for ice, glacial ice was also guided along the inside of the escarpment since it is shaped like a sawtooth. Follow the curve of the escarpment on a map across northern Michigan, which is actually a creation of the escarpment, along Manitoulin Island and the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario.

But then, while we know that the escarpment changes direction at Hamilton, continue the same line across southern Ontario and Lake Erie. Notice that this curve, if continued, brings us right to Lake Chautauqua and in the exact directional alignment of the lake.

This solves the mystery of how the lake came to be, glacial ice was guided by the inside of the Niagara Escarpment and pulled by the rotation of the earth to the south and east, and carved the lake as it came over the broad, rounded ridge between Lake Chautauqua and Lake Erie.

Let's call this movement of ice the Chautauqua Movement. The term "chautauqua" is actually a part of American history. In the days before radio and television, tents would be set up to bring various educational lectures and arts to rural areas with the same concept as a travelling circus. The original chautauqua was on the shore of the lake and is now known as the Chautauqua Institution. But that version of chautauqua has long since passed so that it can now be the name of this glacial ice movement along the inside of the Niagara Escarpment.

There is yet another example of a lake with a mysterious directional alignment in western New York State. This one is known as Waterport Pond, or Waterport Reservoir. It is much smaller than Lake Chautauqua and is found north of the Niagara Escarpment in Orleans County, between the towns of Medina and Albion and not far from the shore of Lake Ontario. This is also an elongated lake, but it's directional alignment is actually perpendicular to the usual glacial movement from the north northwest.

The reason for the formation of this lake is ice being deflected off a limited area of the escarpment. In the same way that a ball thrown at a wall, but at a certain angle, will bounce off the wall at the same angle but on the opposite side.