But most apparent on the Wisconsin landscape are features resulting from stagnant ice conditions and from deposition. When the forward movement of glaciers reached equilibrium with meltback, stagnant ice resulted. Conical hills, called kames grew as debris washed through holes in the ice. Visualize kames as reverse funnels. As stream tunnels beneath glaciers filled up with debris, eskers formed.
Eskers look like inverted streams winding across todays landscape.
Depressions in the ground known as kettles , formed as stranded ice blocks melted and the debris covering them subsided. This melting process could take thousands of years. Some kettles are simple bowl-shaped depressions, but others are now bogs, marshes, or lakes. Features deposited by the ice itself not by meltwater include ground and end moraines, drumlins , and erratics . The materials that compose them had not been sorted by the action of moving water.