The Lowden plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Lowden’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Scotch Grove Formation (dolostone), from the Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, mudstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Lowden reaches the Gulf of America by way of Yankee Run, the Wapsipinicon and the Mississippi: about 1,530 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lowden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
