Legible disturbance layers from fire and glacier shape today’s shoreline

Evidence

The fires that burned here at the turn of the twentieth century gave us a lakeside border of paper birches, brilliant white and rooted in the glacial sands. The last glacier gave us a lakeshore of granite boulders. The jumble of rocks make solitary spots for watching the sunset and create a strong barrier to the action of wind and waves. But there are breaches among the rocks where the waves have ridden in on a storm, undermining the sandy shore and excavating small caves. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 624

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: This is chapter-one-for-the-Reading-the-Landscape course: reading disturbance history directly from present landform — fire scar, glacial till, wave breaches all legible in one shore.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Fire in old forest leaves a distinctive two-age-class structure — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 127; Large-scale disturbances can prevent landscapes from reaching equilibrium — S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and…, 2272; Glacial melt created Long Island’s barrier-beach south shore and bay — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 640

Broader Connections

• Large-scale disturbances can prevent landscapes from reaching equilibrium #qualifies (0.75) — S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and…, 2272