Most Wisconsin citizens share a deep appreciation of the shape and texture of their familiar landscapes-the abundance of fresh water, the fertile soils, the northern forests, the varied landforms. All these features are directly related to a special set of geologic processes and materials that collectively define the land on which we all live, work, and play. But how did it come to be this way? How did it look in the past? What kinds of creatures lived here before us? In Wisconsin's case, the geologic story is long, complex, and incomplete, beginning over three billion years ago and still in progress. Wisconsin's Foundations is just the book for a broad audience of interested citizens who simply want to know more about the origins, evolution, and geological underpinnings of the Wisconsin landscape.

Hit the trail for a dramatic look at Wisconsin’s geologic past. The impressive bluffs, valleys, waterfalls, and lakes of Wisconsin’s state parks provide more than beautiful scenery and recreational opportunities. They are windows into the distant past, offering clues to the dramatic events that have shaped the land over billions of years. Author and former DNR journalist Scott Spoolman takes readers with him to twenty-eight parks, forests, and natural areas where evidence of the state’s striking geologic and natural history are on display. In an accessible storytelling style, Spoolman sheds light on the volcanoes that poured deep layers of lava rock over a vast area in the northwest, the glacial masses that flattened and molded the landscape of northern and eastern Wisconsin, mountain ranges that rose up and wore away over hundreds of millions of years, and many other bedrock-shaping phenomena. These stories connect geologic processes to the current landscape, as well as to the evolution of flora and fauna and development of human settlement and activities, for a deeper understanding of our state’s natural history. The book includes a selection of detailed trail guides for each park, which hikers can take with them on the trail to view evidence of Wisconsin’s geologic and natural history for themselves.

Author Scott Spoolman has picked 52 of the best geologic sites in the state to include in Wisconsin Rocks!, a new title in the state-by-state Geology Rocks! series.

Robert H. Dott, Jr. and John W. Attig wrote Roadside Geology of Wisconsin to help residents and visitors alike envision mastodons roaming in front of glaciers 12,000 years ago, feel storm waves pounding sea cliffs 500 million years ago, and hear volcanoes exploding 1,900 million years ago. With lively prose, detailed maps, black-and-white photographs, and shaded-relief images, the authors succeed in their goal, unraveling the 2,800 million years of geologic history recorded in Wisconsin's rocks. Introductory sections describe the geology of each region, and thirty-five road guides locate and interpret the rocks, sediments, and landforms visible from the state's highways, including the Great River Road in the Mississippi Valley. Roadside Geology of Wisconsin delves further into the geologic history of specific sites such as Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, the Wisconsin Dells, the geologically renowned Baraboo Hills, and more than twenty-five state parks. Features of and access points to the Ice Age National Scenic Trail are noted.

The Ice Age National Scenic Trail meanders across the state of Wisconsin through scenic glacial terrain dotted with lakes, steep hills, and long, narrow ridges. David M. Mickelson, Louis J. Maher Jr., and Susan L. Simpson bring this landscape to life and help readers understand what Ice Age Wisconsin was like. An overview of Wisconsin’s geology and key geological concepts helps readers understand geological processes, materials, and landforms. The authors detail geological features along each segment of the Ice Age Trail and at each of the nine National Ice Age Scientific Reserve sites. Readers can experience the Ice Age Trail through more than one hundred full-color photographs, scores of beautiful maps, and helpful diagrams. Science briefs explain glacial features such as eskers, drumlins, and moraines. Geology of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail also includes detailed trail descriptions that are cross referenced with the science briefs to make it easy to find the geological terms used in the trail descriptions. Whatever your level of experience with hiking or knowledge of glaciers, this book will provide lively, informative, and revealing descriptions for a new understanding of the shape of the land beneath our feet.

"Primarily for students, this guidebook on, and road log to, the Baraboo, Wisconsin, area offers insight into a wide range of geologic features. Precambrian, Cambrian, and Quaternary times are represented in a range of lithologies, structures, stratigraphy, and geomorphology. This notable area lies at the boundary of the glacial and driftless regions of the Quaternary"--

"Over the course of his 43-year career, James C. Knox conducted seminal research on the geomorphology of the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. His research covered wide-ranging topics such as long-term land-scape evolution in the Driftless Area; responses of floods to climate change since the last glaciation; processes and timing of floodplain sediment deposition on both small streams and on the Mississippi River; impacts of European settlement on the landscape; and responses of stream systems to land-use changes. This volume presents the state of knowledge of the physical geography and geology of this unglaciated region in the otherwise-glaciated Midwest with contributions written by Knox prior to his passing in 2012 and by a number of his former colleagues and graduate students"--