page_title: Lake Pepin
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Lake Pepin / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Panorama of Lake Pepin from Florence Township's beach in Frontenac.
context_page_description: Lake Pepin is a naturally occurring lake on the Mississippi River on the border between the U.S. states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is located in a valley carved by the outflow of an enormous glacial lake at the end of the last Ice Age. The lake formed when the Mississippi, a successor to the glacial river, was partially dammed by a delta from a tributary stream and spread out across the ancient valley.
  Lake Pepin is now a corridor for water, highway, and rail transportation. Known as the birthplace of water skiing, it hosts a variety of recreational activities.
context_section_description: The process of sedimentation continues at an accelerated rate; particulates carried by the river upstream are deposited when the current slows where the river empties into the lake.  Pepin's natural flora are threatened by these increased rates of sedimentation, leading the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance to call the phenomenon a "wet desert." Some theorize the lake is filling in at a rate of ten times greater than pre-colonization, due largely to increased run-off from farms along the Minnesota River. Other research maintains sediment accumulation is from a more diverse and complicated series of processes, including natural bank sloughing of large amounts of soil from steep river banks, a result of the geography of the area, composition and physical properties of the soil, man-made restriction of river flooding, access to flood plains and wetlands, and forced straightening an deepening of river channels. Research suggests these processes are being heightened due to increasing precipitation due to climate change.
caption: Panoramic view of Lake Pepin from Florence Township's public beach in Frontenac.
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