Lake Vermont to Lake Champlain: A Truncated History

Paul Fischer

2/1/2017

Professor Alicia Daniels

Lake Vermont to Lake Champlain: A Truncated History

Lake Champlain is surrounded by the Lake Champlain Basin. This extends into Canada and New York as well as Vermont. While it today contributes to a vibrant ecology and superior forest cover in the region, it’s origins are a bit more frosty in nature. A massive glacier filled the modern Champlain Valley and for a short time pools surrounding it are now known as Lake Vermont, a temporally constrictive point (Wright, 5). The Laurentide Ice Sheet carved the depression in topology which lends the region a gradually changing elevation. This occurred nearly 23,000 years ago (2). The modern waterways and lake formed closer to 14,000 or 15,000 years ago (6).

The opposite event to global warming occurred, which is a fascinating geological phenomenon known as isostatic depression (8). In this process, rather than the seas rising, they were in fact much lower than we are experiencing currently, the land actually drops. Consequently, the modern Champlain Valley was actually the Champlain Sea! The history of the Sea is almost half as long, though undoubtedly much more biologically exciting, than that of lake Vermont, or about two thousand years.

Reference:

Wright, Stephen F. "Glacial Geology of the Burlington and Colchester 7.5’Quadrangles, Northern Vermont." University of Vermont, Department of Geology. Burlington, Vermont 5405 (2003).