Glacial Lakes Albany, Champlain, Hitchcock, Winsooski, & Merrimack

Glacial Lake Albany was a prehistoric North American

proglacial lake In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around th ...

that formed during the end of the

Wisconsinan glaciation The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cord ...

. It existed between 15,000 and 12,600 years ago and was created when

meltwater Meltwater is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found in the ablation zone of glaciers, where the rate of snow cover is reducing. Meltwater ca ...

from a retreating glacier, along with water from rivers such as the Iromohawk, became ice dammed in the

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...

. Organic materials in Lake Albany deposits have been carbon dated to approximately 11,700 years ago. The lake spanned approximately from present-day Poughkeepsie to

Glens Falls Glens Falls is a city in Warren County, New York, United States and is the central city of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,700 at the 2010 census. The name was given by Colonel Johannes Glen, the falls ref ...

. Lake Albany drained about 10,500 years ago through the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

due to

post-glacial rebound Post-glacial rebound (also called isostatic rebound or crustal rebound) is the rise of land masses after the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, which had caused isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound ...

. When the lake drained it exposed the sandy and gravelly glaciolacustrine deposits left by the glacier, along a broad plain just west of

Schenectady Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

, where the Mohawk emptied into the lake.

Dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, f ...

and deltaic sands, containing lenses of silty sand, silt and clay, compose the

topsoil Topsoil is the upper layer of soil. It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth's biological soil activity occurs. Description Topsoil is composed of mineral particles and organic matt ...

which now underlies the Albany Pine Bush. Beneath the surficial deposits are lake-bottom silt and clay, which overlie

till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

and shale bedrock. A small rill caused by the lake's drainage created

Patroon Creek Patroon Creek is a stream in Albany County, New York, United States and is a tributary of the Hudson River which flows south to New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean. The creek's source is Rensselaer Lake in the western section of the city ...

, Sand Creek,

Lisha Kill Lisha Kill is a hamlet in the town of Colonie, Albany County, New York, United States. Lisha Kill lies on New York Route 5 (Central Avenue) in the western section of the town. The hamlet received its name from the creek of the same name, Lis ...

, Shaker Creek, Delphus Kill and the Salt Kill in the town of

Colonie, New York Colonie is a town in Albany County, New York, United States. It is the most-populous suburb of Albany, and is the third-largest town in area in Albany County, occupying approximately 11% of the county. Several hamlets exist within the town ...

References

External links

{{Spoken Wikipedia, Lake_Albany_220820.flac, date=August 20, 2022

See also

References

Further reading

External links