Glossary
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Minnesota.
- Anorthosite
- common igneous rock in northern Minnesota made up of
feldspar.
- Blue Diamond Sign
- cross-country skiing trail, often follows a
hiking trail.
- Blazes
- often red or orange plastic tape tied to branches or trees
to marking trail.
- Bog
- wet peatland with black spruce, Labrador tea, and sphagnum
mosses.
- Coniferous
- trees with cones, usually an evergreen tree, though,
as an exception, the Tamarack looses all its leaves each year.
- Corundum
- a hard form of alumina; used as the grit for sandpaper.
- Deciduous
- trees that lose there leaves annually.
- Delta
- the mouth of a river that is a low lying sediment.
- Diabase
- medium grained mafic volcanic rock.
- Dike
- volcanic rock entering the bedrock perpendicular.
- Dolomite
- limestone-like rock composed primarily of the mineral
calcium magnesium carbonate.
- Drumlin
- stretched out hill made of glacial till in the direction
of glacial movement.
- Ephemerals
- wild flowers that appear in the spring in the big
woods.
- Erratic
- a big rock left by glaciers.
- Esker
- a long narrow ridge of sand and gravel deposited by glacial
meltwaters.
- Fen
- wet peatland with water mainly coming from groundwater;
without sphagnum moss.
- Formation
- a sequence of rocks usually from the same epoch.
- Gabbro
- coarse-textured igneous rock.
- Gneiss
- “nice” hard igneous rock; Minnesota’s Gneiss is some of
the world’s oldest.
- Goat Prairie
- Dry bluff prairies that grow on steep southwestern
slopes.
- GPS
- Global Positioning System. Used find locations with
satellites.
- Kame
- mound or knoll of sand or gravel deposited by glacial
meltwaters.
- Kettle
- usually a small lake formed from buried ice blocks.
- Krumholz Effect
- trees stunted by harsh climate
- Marsh
- grassy low lying wet land.
- Mesic
- land that is moist but well drained.
- Moraine
- gravel left by glaciers.
- Orange Diamond Sign
- snowmobile trail.
- Oxbow Lake
- when a meander of a river is stranded to form a lake.
- Peatland
- land where plants decomposes only partially and
accumulates to form brown to black organic material called peat; two main
types bogs and fens.
- Portage
- a trail for carrying boats. Often measured in rods which
equal 16.5 feet.
- Prairie
- where tree cover makes up less than 10 percent of land.
- Precambrian
- prior to 570 million years ago.
- Rod
- equals 16.5 feet. Used to measure portages.
- Sedimentary rock
- layer rock.
- Sill
- volcanic rock extrude parallel to dominate bedrock; compare
dike.
- Slough
- swampy area or backwaters.
- Swale
- wide low depression.
- Till
- sand, gravel, and rocks carried and deposited by a glacier.
- Volcanic
- rock from molten lava.
- White Diamond Sign
- hiking trail.