During the last days of the last ice age, Lake Agassiz was the largest body of fresh water in North America. Lake Agassiz had a b influence on the climate of North America. According to the geological study, between 18000 to 20000 years ago at the peak time of the last ice age, Laurentide Ice Sheet covered the whole of Canada in the eastern part of the Rockies. At its highest point of what exists today as the Hudson Bay the ice was nearly 5 km thick and the layer beneath the ice sheet got pressed due to the weight of the ice sheet. Long lobes of ice spilled into the mid west region as far as Iowa and Central Illinois and their meltwater became the source of the Mississippi River and flowed in the Gulf of Mexico. Then around 13000 years back the southern part of the sheet retreated past the region that divides the Mississippi portion from areas draining northwards. After this all the meltwater of the ice sheet on the northern slope of the divide needed a place to accumulate. And this way the Lake Agassiz came into existence.
The lake was named after Louis Agassiz who was a 19th-century Swiss geologist. According to his theory all the major parts of the large continents were covered under huge ice sheets in the pre historic time. The size, shape, and depth of the lake changed considerably over the centuries. The carbon sediments deposited in the lake's spill ways and the marshes point out to graph of the changing profile of the lake.
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