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Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve
Waterfall Glen is a forest preserve in Downers Grove Township, DuPage County, Illinois, between the towns of Darien and Lemont, covering . It contains several waterfalls on Sawmill Creek as it empties into the Des Plaines River. Rocky Glen Falls, the largest waterfall in the preserve, is actually a natural dam in the valley glen. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps helped restore the waterfall to its naturally tiered state, after years of erosion due to runoff from a nearby mill. It completely surrounds Argonne National Laboratory. It is also home to a popular model airplane field, located in the southwest section of the forest preserve. Hikers can also make the interior trip to St. Patrick Cemetery nestled deep in the preserve. Waterfall Glen's tallgrass prairies, bogs, and Midwestern oak savannas contain 740 native plant species, 75 percent of all the plants known to grow naturally in DuPage County. Over 300 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptile ...
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Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve
Waterfall Glen is a forest preserve in Downers Grove Township, DuPage County, Illinois, between the towns of Darien and Lemont, covering . It contains several waterfalls on Sawmill Creek as it empties into the Des Plaines River. Rocky Glen Falls, the largest waterfall in the preserve, is actually a natural dam in the valley glen. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps helped restore the waterfall to its naturally tiered state, after years of erosion due to runoff from a nearby mill. It completely surrounds Argonne National Laboratory. It is also home to a popular model airplane field, located in the southwest section of the forest preserve. Hikers can also make the interior trip to St. Patrick Cemetery nestled deep in the preserve. Waterfall Glen's tallgrass prairies, bogs, and Midwestern oak savannas contain 740 native plant species, 75 percent of all the plants known to grow naturally in DuPage County. Over 300 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptile ...
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Jacques Marquette
Jacques Marquette S.J. (June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675), sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, was the first European to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley. Early life Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. He came of an ancient family distinguished for its civic and military services. Marquette joined the Society of Jesus at age 17. He studied and taught in France for several years, then the Jesuits assigned him to New France in 1666 as a missionary to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. When he arrived in Quebec, he was assigned to Trois-Rivières on the Saint Lawrence River, where he assisted Gabriel Druillettes and, as preliminary to further work, devoted himself to the study of the local lan ...
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Forests Of Illinois
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, "Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds ''in situ''. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban use." Using this definition, '' Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020'' (FRA 2020) found that forests covered , or approximately 31 percent of the world's land area in 2020. Forests are the predominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are found around the globe. More than half of the world's forests are found in only five countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the United States). The largest share of forests (45 percent) are in th ...
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Protected Areas Of DuPage County, Illinois
Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although the mechanisms for providing protection vary widely, the basic meaning of the term remains the same. This is illustrated by an explanation found in a manual on electrical wiring: Some kind of protection is a characteristic of all life, as living things have evolved at least some protective mechanisms to counter damaging environmental phenomena, such as ultraviolet light. Biological membranes such as bark on trees and skin on animals offer protection from various threats, with skin playing a key role in protecting organisms against pathogens and excessive water loss. Additional structures like scales and hair offer further protection from the elements and from predators, with some animals having features such as spines or camouflage servin ...
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Nature Reserves In Illinois
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word ''physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socr ...
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Limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms when these minerals precipitate out of water containing dissolved calcium. This can take place through both biological and nonbiological processes, though biological processes, such as the accumulation of corals and shells in the sea, have likely been more important for the last 540 million years. Limestone often contains fossils which provide scientists with information on ancient environments and on the evolution of life. About 20% to 25% of sedimentary rock is carbonate rock, and most of this is limestone. The remaining carbonate rock is mostly dolomite, a closely related rock, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, . ''Magnesian limestone'' is an obsolete and poorly-defined term used variously for dolomite, for limes ...
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Forest Preserve District Of DuPage County
The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County is a governmental agency headquartered in Wheaton, Illinois. Its mission is to acquire and hold lands containing forests, prairies, wetlands, and associated plant communities or lands capable of being restored to such natural conditions for the purpose of protecting and preserving the flora, fauna and scenic beauty for the education, pleasure and recreation of the citizens of DuPage County. History The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County was established in 1915, when voters cast ballots to protect against the removal of woodlands. For its first year of operation, $8,000 was appropriated to create, manage and maintain the new Forest Preserve District. County supervisors who governed the District spent the next two years working out operating details for the fifth county forest preserve district in the United States. In 1917, the first tax levy was made, and the first preserve land was purchased: in Oak Brook, called York Woods. To ...
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Chicago Avenue Water Tower And Pumping Station
The Chicago Water Tower is a contributing property and landmark in the Old Chicago Water Tower District in Chicago, Illinois, United States, that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Built to enclose the tall machinery of a powerful water pump in 1869, it became particularly well known when it survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, although the area around it was burnt to the ground. Description The tower is located at 806 North Michigan Avenue along the Magnificent Mile shopping district in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois in a small park, the Jane M. Byrne Plaza. The tower was constructed to house a large water pump, intended to draw water from Lake Michigan. Built in 1869, it is the second-oldest water tower in the United States, after the Louisville Water Tower in Louisville, Kentucky. The Chicago Water Tower now serves as a Chicago Office of Tourism as a small art gallery known as the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower ...
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Native Americans In The United States
Native Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the mainland United States ( Indigenous peoples of Hawaii, Alaska and territories of the United States are generally known by other terms). There are 574 federally recognized tribes living within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations. As defined by the United States Census, "Native Americans" are Indigenous tribes that are originally from the contiguous United States, along with Alaska Natives. Indigenous peoples of the United States who are not listed as American Indian or Alaska Native include Native Hawaiians, Samoan Americans, and the Chamorro people. The US Census groups these peoples as " Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders". European colonization of the Americas, which began in 1492, resulted in a precipitous decline in Native American population because of new diseases, wars, ethni ...
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Louis Joliet
Louis Jolliet (September 21, 1645after May 1700) was a French-Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America. In 1673, Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit Catholic priest and missionary, were the first non-Natives to explore and map the Upper Mississippi River. Early life Jolliet was born in 1645 in Beaupré, a French settlement near Quebec City, to Jean Jolliet and Marie D'Abancourt. When he was six years old, his father died; his mother then married a successful merchant, Geoffroy Guillot dit Lavalle, until his death in 1665. Shortly after the passing of his mother's second husband, she was married to Martin Prevost until her death in 1678. Jolliet's stepfather owned land on the Ile d'Orleans, an island in the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec that was home to First Nations in Canada, First Nations. Jolliet spent much time on Ile d'Orleans, so it was likely that he began speaking Indigenous languages of the Americas at a young age. Besides French language, French ...
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Oak Savanna
An oak savanna is a type of savanna—or lightly forested grassland—where oaks (''Quercus ''spp.) are the dominant trees. The terms "oakery" or "woodlands" are also used commonly, though the former is more prevalent when referencing the Mediterranean area. These savannas were maintained historically through wildfires set by lightning, humans, grazing, low precipitation, and/or poor soil. Although there are pockets of oak savanna almost anywhere in North America where oaks are present, there are three major oak savanna areas: 1) California, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon in the west; 2) Southwestern United States and northern Mexico; and 3) the prairie/forest border of the Midwestern United States. There are also small areas of oak savannas in other parts of the world. (See also Eastern savannas of the United States for information on pine savannas of the U.S. South.) Midwestern oak savannas The oak savannas of the Midwestern United States form a transition zone betw ...
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Forest Preserve
A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for purposes of conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research. They may be designated by government institutions in some countries, or by private landowners, such as charities and research institutions. Nature reserves fall into different IUCN categories depending on the level of protection afforded by local laws. Normally it is more strictly protected than a nature park. Various jurisdictions may use other terminology, such as ecological protection area or private protected area in legislation and in official titles of the reserves. History Cultural practices that roughly equate to the establishment and maintenance of reserved areas for animals date back to ...
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