Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore spans 24 km (15 miles) of Lake Michigan shoreline between Michigan City and Gary, IN (Figure 3B). The beautiful beaches along this stretch of lakeshore are a significant recreational resource for the park and a diverse wildlife retreat situated in a large urban setting. Bedrock lies far beneath the surface and large moraines, beach ridges, and sand dunes preserve a record of the glacial history and subsequent lake-level changes of this area. Indiana Dunes NL at the southern end of Lake Michigan represents the largest strandplain of beach ridges in the Great Lakes with about 150 distinct ridges that have evolved over the past 6000 years (Thompson, 1992).
In the past 2600 calendar years beach ridges have formed about every 30 years due to lake level changes and the rate of sediment supply to the area (Thompson and Baedke, 1995). Colman and others (2000) estimated that sediments are being deposited in the basin of southern Lake Michigan between 4 and 11 times faster than in the 5,000 years before human settlement, which would suggest a higher rate of erosion of the lakeshore due to lake-level change or changes in land use.
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is home to one of the most diverse biological communities per unit area of any of the national parks. For more information on Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore see:
http://www2.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/indu/index.cfm 
