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foundation

§ §

- I think most people stumble
across the Niagara Escarpment,
almost literally,
either from the top
or the bottom.
You can't encounter it without
having a sense of wonder.

- The vertical habitat
of the cliff face itself
is really interesting
because of the rock crevices
and the moist, cool conditions
that the cliff gives you
for plants--
a lot of very specialized
plants grow there.
- You approach the Niagara
Escarpment from the bottom.
It's this moist
moss-covered cliff face
with tumbling stones
and beautiful
gnarled old cedar trees.
If you come at it from the top, you're approaching it
from maybe a hardwood forest
that rolls off.
Down below, you see
some interesting valley.
- The thing I think is cool
about the Escarpment
is the story it tells
of geology.
The story it tells
of how ecology is happening.
It's seeing the looks
in people's eyes
when they're experiencing something new.
- You can imagine
pre-European settlement,
hunter-gatherer communities
walking below and above it.
How often do you get
to go somewhere
where you can separate yourself
from the world,
if you choose,
and learn
a little bit about nature
and maybe
a little about yourself?
§ §

- The Niagara Escarpment
is a geological feature
that spans
the North American continent.
I like to think of it
as the ancient backbone
of North America.
It actually runs
for about a thousand miles
and we actually have
about a quarter
of the length of the Escarpment
here in Wisconsin.
It is a ridge of rock that
is about 430 million years old,
dating from the Silurian Period.
And we were about
20 degrees south of the equator
at the time of the Silurian.
It would have been
a very tropical environment,
kind of like
the Bahamas are today.
We're actually
able to walk on
what was once
the Silurian sea floor.
This rock surface was exposed by
quarrying for the lime industry.
Here's something
that's really interesting
on this rock surface.
This bull's-eye like structure
is called a "stromatolite."
These are actually cyanobacteria
that create this feature.
And they photosynthesize
during the day
and at night,
the sediment washes over.
The next day, the filaments grow
through the sediment
and create another layer
of filaments
and the sediment comes over
again at night.
And you build up through time this layered structure
called a stromatolite.
When they have the top
cut off of them,
they form
these concentric circles
as you cut through those layers of sediment and algae.
They tell us that
the environment here
was extremely shallow water.
We do have stromatolites
that are alive today.
A very famous place where you
can see stromatolites today
is Shark Bay, Australia.
- Evidence of
glaciation here,
the things that struck people
early on,
who didn't really necessarily
know about glaciation,
or science
for that matter.
They noticed that
there were these strange rocks
that didn't belong here.
Rocks from the Canadian Shield
like granite, gneiss and schist.
The other thing I think
people noticed early on
was the scratches that occur
on the tops of places
where you see the top of the
Niagara Escarpment, for example.
You see the glacial striations.
They're pretty striking
and, again, hard to explain
in any other way.
- This is one place
where you can
actually see evidence
that the glacier
came through the area.
It's very nicely accessible
right by Red Bird statue
here in High Cliff State Park.
Can you see the lines
that parallel one another?
Glaciers are kind of like
giant pieces of sandpaper.
They have all of
the rocks and sand and gravel
that's imbedded in the ice.
When it comes across rock,
it can sometimes both polish
and make grooves in the rock.
You can feel where it has planed
off the surface of the dolomite
that show us the direction
that the ice sheet was moving.
We can tell
it was moving north to south
because of the lines created
by that giant
sandpaper-like surface
at the bottom of the ice.
-As later episodes of glaciation
came through North America
from the Hudson Bay region
in Canada,
the glaciers were forced to split into two separate lobes.
One went down the center
axis of Lake Michigan.
It was a much thicker,
much wider lobe of ice.
The other went through
the Green Bay lowlands
and that's the one
that really gave us
the Escarpment
as we're looking at today.
The position
of the Green Bay lobe
of the glacier
and the Lake Michigan lobe
of the glacier
were really controlled
by the Escarpment itself.
But the character
of the Niagara Escarpment
was controlled
by glacial erosion.
- In many places,
what I see at the Escarpment
is an old shoreline.
As the glaciers receded
from this area,
they impounded the drainage.
The Fox River wants to drain
to the north,
but with the glacier
in the Green Bay lowland,
it couldn't go north
so it impounded a large lake,
glacial Lake Oshkosh.
So, in a number of places
along the Escarpment
you see evidence
of a higher shoreline.
Lake Winnebago
is sort of last residue
of a much, much bigger lake
that was here during
the recession of the glacier.

Here we are at the base
of the Niagara Escarpment.
We're looking
at the Silurian dolostone here.
The position at which
we're standing right now
is the level
which Lake Nipissing stood.
Lake Nipissing
is about a 6,000-year old lake,
level when Lake Michigan was
a bit higher than it is today.
And so, this is a fossil sea cliff here
that would have formed
at that time
by wave action eroding away at, preferentially,
the rock that
was more heavily fractured.
This undermining
is a critical process
to make the Niagara Escarpment
as prominent as it is.
- Here along
the Niagara Escarpment,
we have northwest-
or west-facing cliffs
because the rock layers are
tilted to the east or southeast
into the
Michigan Sedimentary Basin.
There are really
two distinct groups of rocks
that form the Escarpment here.
You need to have a resistant
rock layer at the top,
and at this location at Wequiock
we have the Mayville dolomite.
And below that resistant
dolomite layer,
we see a more muddy unit.
We call it
the "Maquoketa Shale."
And that shale doesn't have
much structural integrity,
it was easy
for the glaciers to erode,
it was easy for rivers to erode
before the glaciers got here.

We're about 100 yards downstream
of Wequiock Falls
and we're looking at the best exposure of the Maquoketa Shale
in all
of northeastern Wisconsin.
What we're looking at is clay
and a little bit of volcanic ash
that was rinsed off of
an early an early part
of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Appalachian Mountains
began to form
during the late
Ordovician Period,
when these rocks were deposited.
So, the Niagara Escarpment
exists really because
of three major factors.
First, you have to have
alternating deposition of shale,
which is what we see here
and the more resistant dolomite on top.
Then we had to have tilting of
those rock layers to the east.
And the third event
or third process
is really erosion
of this very weak shale
by rivers and glaciers
after the fact.
So, without this shale we would
not have the Niagara Escarpment.
[waterfalls whoosh mightily]
Niagara Falls is a place where
you have Silurian dolomite
over the top of Ordovician
sandstones and shales.
And it's very similar
to what we are looking at
here at Wequiock Falls.
It's just that
this is a miniature version.
We're looking at the lip
of Wequiock Falls
during a very low flow period.
You can see springs and seeps.
Up above, we have the
fractured Mayville formation,
the dolomite.
And down below we're progressing
into a more muddy system,
but there's enough clay
that it is impermeable to water.
So, at that contact, the water
can't make its way down
any further
into the bed rock.
So, the water leaks down
through the fractures
and then moves horizontally and
seeps out here at the rock face.

We have a variety
of different caves
stretching all along
the Niagara Escarpment.
And, in Wisconsin,
the two kinds of rocks
that are dissolvable or soluble
are limestone and dolostone.
And here in northeast Wisconsin,
all we have is dolostone.
These caves formed
when naturally acidic rainwater,
over thousands
and probably millions of years,
seeps into the rocks
and eroded the faces
along these fractures and
where that water pooled along
the top of the water table,
you have mixing
of two different waters
and it causes dissolution there.
§ §
- You're standing in the woods at Ledge View Nature Center
right in front of our sink-hole cave, Carolyn's Cavern.
We have Montgomery Cave,
which has been known of
at least since the 1860s.
The caves behind me,
the sink-hole caves,
have been known of since 1986.
A couple of people from the
Wisconsin Speleological Society,
we call them "the cavers,"
they got permission
to dig out sink holes
and so they really would be,
I guess,
the main explorers
and discoverers.
- We're actually volunteers.
We don't get paid
for what we do.
This is something we do for fun.
What we're digging through
are what sink holes
are on the surface.
A sink holes is actually
where there was a collapse
of the cave at one time.
- They're rounded out
in places here
because of glacier water
pouring in.
This stuff had a lot of sediment
in it: sands, clays, and gravel.
That really carved out
the walls in here.
You can see scallops.
We have domes.
Here on the wall,
you can see places
where the glacial water
carved it out.
That tells us, for example,
that a lot of water did come
through the cave.
Soil bacteria that gets blown
in here dissolves the lime
and that dissolved lime
can be carried
and put in other places
and an example of that
would be the fringe.
I guess you could say it's just a row of mini-stalactites.
Where the water drips,
it leaves behind a little ring of calcium carbonate.
Ours' here
grow extremely slowly.
- Excavation work involves
cleaning out the material
from the cave.
We're not creating caves.
We're restoring the cave
to what it looked like.
This particular section
of the cave that you're in
is called the "Sliver Passage."
This is a good
representative area here
because it's going to show you the different types of material
that we dig through
when we're excavating the caves.
This is a really good example
here on the wall here.
Right down here
where my finger is pointing
is more of a sandy material.
And if you look
in the middle here,
this more of a gravel material.
This is real flaky gravel here.
And a little bit further over,
this is actually the clay.
But what we're looking for
when we're excavating in caves--
this is encouraging--
is the gravel band here.
We know that this is a tube--
that there was water
that was flowing through here.
If we were
to start excavating here,
we'd probably be able to find
a tube that goes in there.
That's actually probably a passage going in that direction.
There's about 900 feet
of passages now in the caves.
You can see how much expansion
has been going on in this cave.
Not only the discovery of
finding it for the first time,
to be the first person
ever to see that section,
but to be sharing
your experience.
Showing what you were
able to accomplish.
And knowing, after you, hopefully,
get to the age
where you can't do this anymore,
you've left this behind for
everybody else to see and enjoy.
§ §

- Welcome to
Fonferek's Glen County Park
in eastern Brown County.
We're standing below
the Niagara Escarpment,
and more specifically,
a natural arch formation
that exists downstream
of the waterfalls here.
The waterfalls
are the typical attraction,
but if you come downstream
a few hundred yards,
you come across
a lot of bedrock pavement
until you run into
this massive wall of stone
and you can see
the different layers
of dolomite material that exist.
Some are harder,
such as the caprock,
which encapsulates the arch.
We've got
a softer layer of material
you can see is worn away
almost into a pillar shape.
Thousands of years ago,
when the glaciers receded,
and all the melt waters
came downstream
and, eventually, over the falls,
after they work their way back
from the edge of the Escarpment
like Niagara Falls,
it hit this wall and started to carve this shape
and turned the water
about 90 degrees.
Further erosion
from freezing and thawing
and surface water coming through and seeping into this rock
has started to erode it
and pick away at it.
You can see a lot
of the fresh debris
that exists down near the base.
This is one of the few
natural arches in the state,
and to my knowledge,
the only one of dolomite material that exists.
We've got
yet another cliff face
on the opposite side
of the creek bed.
You can see that
this has been subject
to hundreds and thousands
of years of erosion as well.
The softer material has created
the talus slopes at the base.
The small chunks
will periodically fall off.
We also have on this side
several large pieces of caprock
that have fallen off
from the top of the structure
and these are enormous.
Over time,
as the under materials
get cut away,
the weight shifts and
those pieces will topple over.
What we have on the right
is one of the best looks
at what's called "block creep"
as an erosional process,
whereby a natural fracture within the dolomite
has been pushed away
and pushed out
through snow and ice action
and surface waters flowing down
between and through this crevice
and at some point,
as it continues
to undercut and push out,
this too
will topple over
into the stream bed.
§ §

- Here we are at Lime Kiln Trail
at High Cliff State Park.
Again, a very accessible area
and what we're looking at here are the ruins
of the Lime Kilns
that were the basis of
the lime industry
here at High Cliff State Park.
- The first operations
for the lime business,
the quarrying business,
was located
right on the water
and that made easy access
for barges to come and hook up
and take product from High Cliff
to Menasha, Oshkosh,
and Fond du Lac.
But the building burned down
a couple of different times
and it was decided
that they would
build a building higher up
so that they could take
advantage of the rail system.
- A lime kiln is where
you burn the rock
to create a white powder
called "lime."
- The lime industry
here at High Cliff
provided an essential product for the day.
Gravel for roads,
limeate for building homes
and for use in agriculture,
and also crushed rock.
'Cause the plant closed
in about 1956,
the State of Wisconsin
had its eye on this area.
They really wanted
it for a state park.
The land was purchased
piece-by-piece,
and here today we have
a wonderful 1,200-acre park.
§ §

- We're on the actual
Niagara Escarpment here
on the east shore
of Lake Winnebago.
I think we're about
300, 350 feet up from the lake.
- Where I'm standing here today,
if you were to go directly east and could walk across the ocean,
you'd find yourself walking
through Tuscany, Italy
and Bordeaux, France,
which are the premium
wine regions of the world.
And from April through October,
our climatic conditions
are identical.
- We typically grow the same types of grapes grown in Europe,
which is a cool climate grape.
- Here, you get
that constant wind that blows
so if we get a good rain
during the day,
if the wind's blowing,
within 15 minutes, half an hour, everything's dry again.
- We get air currents
off the water
and that protects us from frost
so we get a little
bit longer growing season.
- When we were planting,
people would drive by and go, "What are you doing?"
and I'm like,
"Planting wine grapes."
And they're like, "Grapes
don't grow here in Wisconsin."
And, you know,
now they buy the wine.
So, it's been an evolution
over the years.
- We're able to grow some very
high quality grapes in our area
and transform those into
some very high quality wines.
It's not just rose wines.
Now we're making dry reds
that are barrel-aged
that stand up to
a Cabernet or a Pinot Noir.
They're a great
Wisconsin-made wine
that truly has its own flavor.
- An "AVA" stands for
"American Viticultural Area"
and it's a federal designation
that is awarded
to a specific region
if there is proof that
there is something different
about your climate,
your soil, and topography
that lends itself to
a distinctiveness in the wines.
- I believe it took five years
to get it established.
From the first filing
with the government
that Steve DeBaker did
to when it
actually got approved.
- Some of the things
that make it unique
are the microclimate
that exists around us.
With the lakes that surround us
like Lake Michigan,
the Bay of Green Bay,
Lake Winnebago,
you have your own little
microclimate here
where you have temperatures
are very moderating
by the body of water around us.
- This AVA is a combination
of those factors
of the geography, and its
location, the weather patterns.
It's also a function
of the soil,
the type of terrain.
- The Wisconsin Ledge
consists of almost a quarter million acres of land.
It incorporates almost twenty
different bonded wineries
throughout the state.
- People set aside a full weekend and they come and visit
and tour all the wineries
and get to see the true flavor
of our Viticultural Area.
- Winemaking is
the ultimate example
of taking something
from the earth,
putting it into a bottle
to have a family enjoy it.
That process is something
that is a motivating factor
for a winemaker.
§ §

- We're here
on the Niagara Escarpment
and in 1845,
a group of four men
from Fort Atkinson
came to the Neda Mine area.
They discovered what they
called "a peculiar red earth."
And this peculiar red earth
was sent off
to a blacksmith in Illinois.
He said, "Yes,
it does contain Iron,"
and the mine was started
shortly thereafter.
It was mined on and off
and owned by a number
of different mining companies,
up until the early 1900s.
We're here
at this time of the year
because bats that hibernate
at this mine location
are returning to the mine
to prepare
for winter hibernation.
The Niagara Escarpment
is one of those linear features
that bats can follow
and it leads them
right to this site.
We're going to be able
to experience
one of the most beautiful phenomenon
that I think anyone can experience in Wisconsin
and that's
the swarming of 143,000 bats
here around the entrances
of the mine.
The fall swarm is this time
period when bats are returning
from wherever
they've spent the summer
and they're investigating
the openings to the mine.
There's four miles of tunnels
and lots of
deep cracks and crevices,
lots of corners
and different passage ways.
If you stand near an entrance,
you can actually feel
the little breath of wind
that comes
from the flitting wings
and you can hear the fluttering
as bats
are circling around you.
The bats will be going in
and investigating
those different areas
of the mine.
That will continue to occur
for the next several weeks
until the bats eventually do hunker down for the winter,
lower their body temperature,
and lower their breathing,
and their heart rate,
and go into a very deep sleep.
§ §
- Today, we went down and
hiked to the pictographs.
They are fairly weathered.
They're not something
that just pops out
and you definitely
have to look for them.
They give a sense
of awe and surprise to me.

We're up here
in northern Door County,
up in Death's Door
and we're going
to be looking
at some pictographs
that I was shown
when I was a child.
This is the deer, at least
what I think looks like a deer.
The antlers are up top,

there, there, there, there,
and a little head there.
The neck, body, a leg and a leg.
We're moving down
below the deer.
We've got a large canoe here
with one, two, three,
four, five, six people in it,
looks like.
And my favorite character,
which is the Birdman.
He's got his little head
up here,
which has been
a little roughed up,

and a feather on his left,
and a feather on his right,
and two legs there.
And moving down,
one of the other more visual
items of the pictograph
would be this horse.
The body of the animal.
A leg,
and you see a leg back there,
but the head
looks like it has two ears.
This area gets some large storms
and has been beaten on a lot being up in Death's Door.
So, I'm surprised
that they're still around
and just got
a lot of reverence for these.
§ §

- We're in Brown County
near Dyckesville
at a state natural area
called the "Red Banks Alvar."
An alvar is
a unique plant community
that's not found
in many places in the world.
Alvars are formed
over dolomite or limestone
and in most places, there
is very little soil or no soil
and you get a type of alvar called an "alvar pavement."
But where you have
deposits of sand
or along the cracks
in the rocks,
you can have trees
and other things form.
But also you need the influence
of a large body of water.
So, in Wisconsin here
we have the Bay of Green Bay.
The type of alvar
we're standing in now is
an "alvar shrubland savannah"
or "alvar savannah."
One of the plants
that I want to show you first
is this little white
four-petaled
flower down here.
This is "Bluet."
It's a very nice plant
that grows both in prairies,
true prairies that is,
but also here in this alvar.
This plant here is
"Pale-Spike Lobelia."
It has just a few leaves
on the main stem that alternate.
The next plant I want
to show you is "Mountain Mint."
So, if you pull a little off,
crush it and smell it--
very fragrant.
Another pretty common plant
in most prairies
is "Black-eyed Susan."
It's easy to identify.
Gold petals, brown center,
hairy stem,
with alternate leaves.
This is "Northern Bedstraw."
Northern Bedstraw can persist
in this sort of dry to dry mesic
kind of savannah,
but it can also grow
in wetter environments.
This little purple one here
that has bell shaped flowers
is named just that.
It's called "Bell Flower"... sometimes "Hair Bell."
Very delicate, long,
linear-leaved plant,
it grows in prairies and
can grow on rock outcroppings.
There's a few interesting
things you can be looking for
from a fauna
and also a flora standpoint.
And the vegetation here
transitions from
a forest-type plant community
to a prairie- and savannah-
type community.

§ §

- It's definitely the case
that parks are located
where the rocks
are well exposed.
The National Park Service
recognized that
this was a huge influence
on where our
National Parks were located.
Where there was geology,
people are just
attracted to the geology
and I think the same is true
for the Niagara Escarpment.
- It's the contrast
in the landscape
that are really appealing.
For me, a cliff
next to a lowland
or a cliff especially near
the Bay of Green Bay
is visually and aesthetically appealing.
- The towering bluffs overhead
definitely puts you
in your place a little bit.
It gives me a sense of home.
This is definitely home for me and always will be.
- It tells us about
the history of our planet.
It is something tangible.
You can go to,
you can look at the rocks,
you can learn about
what the environment was like
430 million years ago.
- It just gives you
a sense of wonder and awe
as you look at that
and understand how old it is.
- When I'm near the Escarpment,
I feel like this is my place.
- The landscape
is just part of the story.
It also sets up a micro-habitat.
- You can get a sense for
what formed these rocks,
what kind of
fossils are present,
what organisms lived here
four hundred and some odd million years ago.
- It's a wonderful opportunity
to know a place,
to really know a place,
to know it well enough
to sit there
and be comfortable
not saying anything
to yourself or to anybody else.
- It's also a place
to find peace.
Peace in nature, the plants,
just a place to sit
and reflect on one's life.
- We protect things
that we feel close to
and having that feeling
for this sense of place
is something that allows us
to preserve and sustain
areas of beauty like this.
§ §

[waterfall whooshes]

Schneider,