Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The Chatsworth Bog

I have been reading East Central Illinois, Exploring the Beginnings by Elisabeth M. Hanson.  She talks about the Chatsworth Bog and deciphering the Flora Record for East Central Illinois. 
By extracting a core of soil and carbon dating them investigators track the changing vegetation from the oldest to the most recent.  15,000 years following the melting of the ice that
formed the Chatsworth Bog.
So interesting.  Probably Oliver's Grove and Turtle Pond.  Not far from the Arnold Homesteads.  Had you heard of the Chatsworth Bog Jackie. Road trip! :)

 
"Upon the surface of such ponds, wind borne pollens from windward-growing vegetation "rained" during each growing season, settling to the bottom in annual layers mixed with dust debris.  To reconstruct the chronological story of the changing vegetation in the bog vicinity since early post glacial times, Palynologists (pollen scientists) extract a cylindrical core down through the layered sediments that have accumulated since the ice melted. By identifying pollens in the core, from bottom to top, and carbon dating them, these investigators trace the changing vegetation from the oldest to the most recent.  What had seemed impossible to us is thus accomplished; both the history of the procession of vanished plant assemblages in the study area and the climate changes through the 15,000 years following the melting of the ice that Chatsworth Bog are revealed to us."
 
 
 
Corn and big bluestem grass.
 
--East Central Illinois, Exploring the Beginnings; Elisabeth M. Hanson; Dixon Graphics, Champaign,Illinois; 2012.
 
 
 


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Irish Settlement Road