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How The Boston Harbor Islands Were Formed

When I went on a field trip to the Boston Harbor Islands, I learned a lot about how they were formed. It all started when a **glacier** came and formed the Boston Harbor Islands. This glacier carried sediments of rocks, sand, dirt, and **till**. While the glacier was moving, it created **drumlins** by moving over the dirt. When the glacier melted it left all the water in the drumlins, creating **drown drumlins**.

Erosion by waves, by water, and by wind had a huge impact on the formation as well. **Erosion by waves** used all of its force to hit against the shore of the ** beach ,** and slowly erode away a big part of the islands, called **impact**. **Erosion by water** forms **rills** and **gullies** that erode and ** deposits ** the dirt from one spot, and moved it to another. **Erosion by wind** also moves dirt and sand around, but also scratches the retrieved sediment against rocks in a process called **abrasion**.

A **long shore drift** is when waves hit a beach or a land form at an angle, moving the sediment towards the direction of the moving waves. This creates a **spit** (a piece of land connected to the shore, but it stretches out far into the body of water). When a glacier pushes all the till into one spot, but then melts, it leaves behind a pile sediment called a ** moraine .** Similar to the moraine is a **kettle pond**, which is basically a melted block of ice from a retreating glacier, that’s surrounded by land. I really enjoyed this field trip because I learned so much about the formation of the Boston Harbor Islands.