The Birch Creek 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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Birch Creek’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Little Falls Formation (schist, slate), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary, hypabyssal. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, marble, mica-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Birch Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Birch Creek, the Kettle, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,940 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Birch Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
