![\"borucki_drilling250x300\"](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2016\/10\/Borucki_drilling250x300-250x300.jpg\")
The drill bores into the ground and drives a hollow metal tube into the soil. When that tube is brought back up, it contains a samples of deposits not exposed in the bluffs.<\/p>\n
Borucki worked with Frank Miller, the superintendent of the Cudahy Water Utility, to obtain permission to drill on city property at the base of the bluffs.\u00a0 The drilling location abuts Cudahy\u2019s water pumping station, which draws water from Lake Michigan and pumps it to the city\u2019s water plant. Miller provided geotechnical logs for borings that were done prior to the construction of the pump building, which allowed Borucki to see what glacial units were present beneath the beach. The logs were interesting, but no soil samples were available for analysis.<\/p>\n
If you look at the bluffs and the layers exposed in them, you begin to get an idea of what was happening when a massive glacial lobe filled the Lake Michigan basin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a river out in front of the ice, and the pinkish brown layer is glacial till,\u201d Borucki said, pointing out layers in the bluff.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlacial till is unsorted and not layered,\u201d he\u00a0added. \u201cIf you can imagine, glaciers can move the Sandburg dorms, no problem. Water only has so much energy, so it will transmit sand grains, gravel and sometimes cobbles. It takes a lot of energy to move those cobbles and boulders with water. We know we have river deposits overlying that till.\u201d<\/p>\n
The layers in the eroded and denuded bluffs indicate there were probably lakes in front of the incoming glaciers at one time. The units exposed in the bluffs confirm that Milwaukee was a dynamic geological environment, with glaciers flowing westward and then melting back probably dozens of times during the Pleistocene Epoch, which extends to about 2.6 million years ago. There were also wetland areas present at the drilling location at one point, based on the presence of dense chunks of peat, tightly compressed organic compounds that are so old that carbon dating can\u2019t accurately estimate their age.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s below the exposed bluffs is anybody\u2019s guess, and Borucki\u2019s research will shine a light on how the ground beneath our feet was formed. It\u2019s important because that ground isn\u2019t always stable and the bluffs along the lake are eroding in some locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps other researchers will be able to use the collected data to better characterize bluff retreat and recommend means of minimizing it,\u201d Borucki said. \u201cIn some areas like Kenosha and other areas around Milwaukee, people wanted that view, so they just said, we\u2019ll build a home right here. Perhaps they should have consulted a geologist first.\u201d<\/p>\n
It will be a while before Borucki can fully analyze the data recovered from the drilling, but when he does, he\u2019ll be able to paint a clearer picture of how the landscape came to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Great glacial forces shaped Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee area thousands of years ago. 51ÁÔÆæ researcher Mark Borucki is drilling into the bluffs along the lake to figure out just what happened and how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":39653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[249],"section":[139,143],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[158,161],"class_list":["post-39652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","tag-community-engagement","section-science-technology","section-water-environment","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","uwmnews-feed-letters-science","uwmnews-feed-hard-science"],"yoast_head":"\n