Loess - Sites

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The Loess Hills of Iowa owe their fertility to the prairie topsoils built by 10,000 years of post-glacial accumulation of organic-rich humus as a consequence of a persistent grassland biome. When the valuable A-horizon topsoil is eroded or degraded, the underlying loess soil is infertile, and requires the addition of fertilizer in order to support agriculture.

The loess along the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, Mississippi consist of three layers. The Peoria Loess, Sicily Island Loess, and Crowley's Ridge Loess accumulated at different periods of time during the Pleistocene. Ancient soils, called paleosols, have developed in the top of the Sicily Island Loess and Crowley's Ridge Loess. The lowermost loess, the Crowley's Ridge Loess, accumulated during the late Illinoian Stage. The middle loess, Sicily Island Loess, accumulated during early Wisconsin Stage. The uppermost loess, the Peoria Loess, in which the modern soil has developed, accumulated during the late Wisconsin Stage. Animal remains include terrestrial gastropods and mastodons.

Loess soil forms sharp hills east of the Mississippi River and Yazoo River in western Mississippi north and south of Vicksburg. These deposits are more than 30 m thick (comparable to those in Iowa) immediately above the river valleys, to which they are sub-parallel, and thin to trace thickness within 40 km to the east. Streams and gulleys are incised very deeply and sharply between the linear loess ridges making topography very important in the conduct of military operations for the Vicksburg Campaign.

The Palouse Hills of eastern Washington and northern Idaho is a fertile agricultural region based on loess deposits.

Glacial loess from the Matanuska Glacier blown into Matanuska Valley created the fertile soil conditions that motivated the Matanuska Colony resettlement experiment in Alaska during the Great Depression.

The Loess Plateau (simplified Chinese: 黄土高原; traditional Chinese: 黃土高原; pinyin: huángtǔ gāoyuán), also known as the Huangtu Plateau, is a plateau that covers an area of some 640,000 km² in the upper and middle of China's Yellow River and China proper. The Yellow River was so named because the loess forming its banks gave a yellowish tint to the water. The soil of this region has been called the "most highly erodible soil on earth". The Loess Plateau and its dusty soil cover almost all of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and parts of others.

Hungary has several areas that are covered by loess. At locations such as Dunaújváros and Balatonakarattya, loess walls are exposed as loess reefs. Similar formations exist in Romania (Wallachian Plain) and in Bulgaria on the south bank of the Danube.

Central Belgium is covered by thick loess stacks. Neanderthal artifacts were found within the soils between the loess layers of the Veldwezelt-Hezerwater.

Crowley's Ridge in Arkansas is a natural loess accumulation point.