|
|
FROM A TWIG TO A MIGHTY OAK: Part 1 The following is Copyright © 2016-2020 by Clayton
Barker, all rights reserved. It was published on the editorial page of The
Burford Times, May 5th, 2016, in Burford, Ontario, Canada.
Whiteman’s Creek and Art Cadman’s Lion’s
Park in the autumn: This very old oak tree in the foreground clings to its
ever-changing world. It is possibly a remnant of what was a nearby oak
opening, or oak savannah, about 200 years ago, a leftover from the days of
the early settlers to this Township (Photo by Clayton Barker). Continuing from where my “Tenants of
The Land” columns left off, from earlier this year, I will now take a step
back a bit, to fill in some background information about the natural
formation of our landscape here in the geographic township of Burford. Also,
in light of the recent “Community Tree Plant,” hosted by Paris District High
Schools’ CELP students and The Burford Lions Club and Earth Day, this past
week, I will also briefly outline the evolution of the real first occupants
of this land – the trees. However, I must start with the ground beneath them
first. In high school, geography class was
the next best thing to a local history lesson for me when one of my favourite
teachers, the late Harry Southam, was teaching it. He seemed very
enthusiastic, especially when describing the formation and evolution of the
various physiographic features of our local landscape here in Brant County.
He even took the class on field trips to see these different land formations
up close. For an aspiring young local
historian, this subject further stimulated my interest in contour maps and
old survey maps and cartography in general. It may have also inspired me in
the selection of my present career in Urban Design and Civil Engineering. I
can still picture Mr Southam at the front of the classroom, talking about
glaciers and pointing to a large-scaled L.J. Chapman and D.F. Putnam map of
the physiographic regions of Ontario. I probably wouldn’t have been so
interested in Harry’s class, had he not shown me how the outline of Burford
Township could easily be transposed onto that geomorphological map.
Therefore, according to Chapman and Putnam and the late Mr Southam, the
history of the forest, here in the geographic Township of Burford, begins on
bare ground (or at least barren glacier-tilled land). Imagine the landscape void of all
trees, with only small shrubs, lichens and mosses over barren tundra - this
is how it looked here some 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last glacier
episode, known as the Wisconsinan glaciation (between 85,000 and 11,000 years
ago in North America). As the glacier receded north, the land scarified and
the rock and granular materials pulverized and sorted, then deposited by
meltwater streams and rivers. It has been estimated that these glaciers were
approximately 1km to 3km in thickness. Apparently, this tundra stage, in the
evolution of the forest, did not last as long as you would think. The ground
warmed, and the growing season lengthened rapidly when the permafrost was
gone from the earth. The various land formations (till moraines and eskers
etc.) which are the hills and valleys around us today are composed of glacial
till, which is an un-stratified mixture of clay, silt, sand, gravel, stones
and boulders. The Wisconsin glacial episode reached
its maximum extent about 25,000 to 21,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene
epoch, in the Quaternary period, of the Cenozoic era, in the Phanerozoic
aeon, according to geologists. This day and age, in which we live, is
actually within what is known as the Holocene epoch. Between these
significant glacial periods, there are sometimes lengthy warming periods,
which are what is called an “interglacial.” We are in one right now, and this
glacial period is not over yet, as there are still glaciers on nearly every
continent on earth (except Australia). Therefore, even though the trend seems
to be towards the earth warming up - when it comes to glaciers, I’d say we
are not out of the woods yet! REFERENCES: For this series of columns,
information has been gleaned from the following: “The Physiographic Regions
of Southern Ontario, Third Edition,” (1984) by L.J. Chapman and D.F. Putnam;
wickipedia.com; “Historical Atlas of Canada,” by R. Cole Harris, editor and
illustrated by Geoffrey J. Matthews, cartographer. |
|
CLICK TOPICS BELOW |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
