ºÚÁÏÉç

Easily overlooked evidence of a landscape shaped during the Ice Age becomes visible on a walk with a geomorphologist through ºÚÁÏÉç's Pinelands campus.  

Mark Demitroff, an adjunct instructor who studies the Ice Age and reconstructs what the Pine Barrens environment looked like over time, guided a campus nature tour to show students in his class, "The Pine Barrens," that hints from the frozen past are hiding in plain sight.

There was a time when Galloway Township was within 100 miles of a massive continental ice sheet that ended at Exit 11 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Although the ice sheet never reached ºÚÁÏÉç's campus, the cold, dry and windy conditions still had an impact on our climate and geology. 

"For extended periods during the last 2.5 million years, a time known as the Pleistocene, there were no pine trees here. Instead, the vegetation was often sparse and even nonexistent—desert-like—in  the most extreme episodes," said Demitroff. 

When Demitroff describes how the campus landscape formed, it sounds foreign in comparison to what we see today. "Raging winds blew the campus sugar sand into long dunes and sheets. Desert dust clouded the sky," he said. 

Last month,  presented their research on Pine Barrens sand dune fields at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting. 

Relicts of ancient cold climate geologic landforms still exist today as wetlands now camouflaged by vegetation and a changing climate.

Back in the classroom, Demitroff pointed out the window and said, "There's a laboratory out there." 

The class reviewed an aerial image and then headed to the outdoor classroom in the Pinelands. 

"I want you to read the landscape like a Piney. With new eyes, you can wonder why the landscape looks the way it does. Look for the old sand dunes and river terraces," Demitroff said.  

Evan Yunker, an Environmental Science major, grew up in the pines, but he's learned a lot about his home. "When you think about things with that scale (looking back to the Ice Age), it puts things into perspective," he said. 

Maxine Livingston, a Marine Science major, has camped in the pines and explored Wharton State Forest, but she wanted to study the science connected to nature's playgrounds. 

Seemingly ordinary places on campus now have a new meaning to students who have walked alongside Demitroff.    

View the photo story by Susan Allen 

 

Students look at a circa 1931 aerial image of the campus with markers labeling round ponds called spungs and hairpin-shaped dunes. Mark Demitroff, an adjunct instructor in the School of Natural Science and Mathematics, keeps his lecture brief. "One hour out there is equivalent to three hours in here," he says. 

 

The class stops at the top of the hill that leads down to the D-Wing Circle. "We are standing on a river terrace. This was the bank of an old river in the Ice Age, " said Demitroff. The gravel surfaces that remain of old rivers make stable ground to build on, he explained. 

 

Demitroff points out a native tree called the sweetbay magnolia, named in part for the lowland basins they thrive in called Carolina Bays. Spungs are called bays in Delaware and further south. Further down the path he identified june-berry, also called a shad bush after the fish that lives its adult life in salt water and returns to freshwater to spawn. "The shad run used to begin right when the white flowers bloomed, as did the river herring run. In high school, we would be excused from class for the herring run. We’d catch 100 per hour," he recalled.   

 

"You are looking at the remains of a cranberry bog," said Demitroff when the class stopped in front of Lake Fred. A concrete dam on Moss Mill Stream formed the cranberry bog that we know today as Lake