Book Review: Fragile Giants: A Natural History of the Loess Hills

Authors

Kenneth D. Carlander, Iowa State UniversityFollow

Document Type

General Interest Article

Abstract

The Loess Hills, which are a special feature of the eastern bank of the Missouri River in Iowa and northern Missouri, have been cited by Dean Roosa, Iowa's State Ecologist, as a "world treasure and ... our best-kept secret." These Hills are mounds of finely ground soil, "glacial flour," deposited by dust storms after the glaciers receded 31 to 12 thousand years ago. Loess is rather widely distributed in Iowa, but the extensive deposits (often over 200 feet deep) on and against the eastern wall of the valley left a rolling, wave-like, terrain which on erosion leaves vertical banks of compacted soil. Cornelia Mutel of the University of Iowa has compiled a comprehensive introduction to this unique Iowa treasure. The characteristic features of the Hills and their flora and fauna are illustrated with drawings and photographs (5 maps, 77 figures, and 8 colored photographs).

Publication Date

March 1990

Journal Title

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science

Volume

97

Issue

1

First Page

36

Last Page

36

Copyright

© Copyright 1990 by the Iowa Academy of Science, Inc.

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Carlander, Kenneth D. (1990) "Book Review: Fragile Giants: A Natural History of the Loess Hills," Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS, 97(1), 36-36.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/jias/vol97/iss1/8