Water and Soil Conservation exam

quiz 1

What are the 5 factors of soil formation and a possible 6th

1. climate

2. organism

3. relief

4. parent material

5. time

6. humans

What kind of soils does Illinois have

a mosaic of timber and prairie soils

What is the difference between timber and prairie soils

prairie soils

1. tend to have a thicker A horizon

2. are younger in age with fewer weather minerals

Timber has

1. smaller A horizon

2. older age as minerals are more weathered

3. a zone of depletion

What are different parts of Illinois showing different ages of bedrock at the surface

because at some point some uplift happened and took of younger rock in some areas

What can we not find dinosaur fossils in illinois

there is a gap in rock history in Illinois where the entire Mesozoic era layer of rocks has been completely removed

What is Stratigraphy

the study of rock layering

How do we date rocks

1. layers

2. fossils

3. radio dating with carbon 14

What is pedology

the study of soil classification and formation

What was happening in the Ordovician era in Illinois

it was a shallow sea at that point

What was happening to Illinois during the Mississippian era

Lots of bluffs, caves, and karst topography from limestone were being made

what was happening in the Pennsylvanian era in Illinois

it had become a mass of swamps and created a massive coal depsoit

What is Mazon Creek

a place in illinois that is a fossil hotspot for being able to fossilize both hard and soft tissue

What was happening in the Pleistocene era in Illinois

the ice age and ice sheets had scoured Illinois changing its topography and soil

What is Loess

a silt sized ground up minerals created from glaciers that act as soil parent material

What is unique about the flow of the Illinois river

the rivers flow is slow enough it does not remove sediment immediate and creates deltas, alluvial fans which create unique productive ecosystems

What is the Kankaee torret

a massive tsunami like event that broke through the glaceris and gouged out sections of illinois leaving places like canyons, sand rills, and massive rock in places they wouldnt normaly exist in a fast time period

What was the sucession of enviorment in Illinois after the Kankakee torrent

1. started with a tundra environment

2. then gave way to a boreal forest with spruce and fir

3. next a deciduous forest with oaks and elm

4. lastly prairie land took over

How did scientist know what environments were being created at certain times

they studied the megafauna and pollen of those eras

What led to the continuation of the prairie land known as the prairie peninsula to continue to exist past what it should

1. large grazing animals

2. droughts

3. fire

What created the fires in the prairie

1. droughts

2. lighting

3. natives

What did natives use fire in prairie lands

There is a guess that they used it because grazing animals are drawn to prairie land that was recently burned, which means they became easier to hunt

Why are fires good for prairie lands

Those fires help keep woody plants at bay and invasive species, while the prairie herbaceous plants have adapted to use the fire as a way to grow and release seeds.

what two things are stored under Illinois glacial deposits

bedrock and paleosols (old soils that didn’t fully form)

what is an end moraine

the end part of where a glacier stopped and drop off a lot of deposits at the end

what is the hennepin canal

a canal made to connect the Mississippi and Illinois rivers by creating a canal through the old Mississippi channel in the rock

when did the first settlers in Illinois appear

20,000 years ago

Who were the first settlers in illinois

the paleoindians

Why do we not know when exactly the first natives arrived in illinois

its impossible to know because we can’t carbon date then as there’s no organic matter left from them

What happened during the Archaic periodc

this was a period where archaic natives were around and had things like

1. tools

2. small villages

3. cultivation of plants

What is the Koster site

a site in Greene Illinois that had a huge amount of archelogy of the Archaic natives showing both domestication of dogs and less nomadism

What happened during the woodland period

another era of natives who had

1. they had pottery

2. bow and arrows

3. cultivation of corn

4. long distance trades

What happened during the Mississippian period

another era of natives who had distinct things such as

1. earth mounds

2. new shell ceramics

3. large trade networks

4. chiefdoms