Together, they constitute the greatest freshwater system on Earth, covering an area larger than Texas and about half the size of Alaska. This corresponds to thinking of lakes Erie and Ontario as "down south" and the others as "up north". In 2002, 162million net tons of dry bulk cargo were moved on the Lakes. A wide range of rock types and deposits are found in the Great Lakes because of their broad area and glacial origin. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. One such spot boasts some of the bluest water in Michigan, and you might just want to spend all day unwinding along its shore. In 2007, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society announced that it had found the wreckage of Cyprus, a 420-foot (130m) long, century-old ore carrier. Periodic mass die-offs result in vast numbers of the fish washing up on shore; estimates by various governments have placed the percentage of Lake Michigan's biomass which was made up of alewives in the early 1960s as high as 90%. [109] Following a small uproar, the Senate voted to revoke the designation on March 24 (although New York and Vermont universities would continue to receive funds to monitor and study the lake). By the mid-1980s, most jurisdictions bordering the Great Lakes had controlled phosphate detergents. This effect can be very localized and overridden by offshore wind patterns. It connects the Hudson River drainage to Lake Erie (actually the Niagara River upstream of the Falls): Just because the Caspian sea is named "sea" doesn't mean it's considered a sea. Viking Ocean ; Great Lakes Collection excursions Announcing Our 2023 Cruisers' Choice Award Winners! As the ice retreat continued, Lake Maumee was drained into Lake Chicago through a valley that now contains the Grand River in Michigan. The ongoing disaster striking the coastal communities of the Great Lakes hasn't captured national attention like hurricanes and wildfires in other parts of the country. This article is about the Great Lakes of North America. [6][7][8][9], The Great Lakes began to form at the end of the Last Glacial Period around 14,000 years ago, as retreating ice sheets exposed the basins they had carved into the land, which then filled with meltwater. This form of mercury is not detrimental to a majority of fish types, but is very detrimental to people and other wildlife animals who consume the fish. About 50million pounds (23kt) of fish is harvested each year from Great Lakes which has raised concerns on how this might affect human health. Corrections? When a second fault line, the Saint Lawrence rift, formed approximately 570million years ago,[14] the basis for Lakes Ontario and Erie was created, along with what would become the Saint Lawrence River. Grain exports are also a major cargo on the lakes. Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. I have no idea how this would rank up to other seas like the Mediterranean Sea in area but it would be one of the world's few freshwater seas (Joining the Sea of Galilee). The goby is considered undesirable for several reasons: it preys upon bottom-feeding fish, overruns optimal habitat, spawns multiple times a season, and can survive poor water quality conditions.[73]. The largest postglacial lake, Nipissing, occupied the basins of Huron, Michigan, and Superior. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. You are wrong WRT the Great Lakes. Sailors of bulk freighters transferring cargoes from Lake Superior and northern Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to ports on Lake Erie or Ontario commonly refer to the latter as the lower lakes and Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior as the upper lakes. The Great Lakes also have several peninsulas between them, including the Door Peninsula, the Peninsulas of Michigan, and the Ontario Peninsula. The Great Lakes are a stunning feat of nature. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act of 2019 passed as Public Law 116-294 on January 5, 2021. And one of the differences is the wave periods and steepness. On December 13, 2005, the Governors and Premiers signed these two agreements, the first of which is between all ten jurisdictions. Updates? As the ice sheet retreated, low-lying, glacially depressed areas, such as the region to the east of Georgian Bay, were exposed. The Wisconsin Fisheries Commission noted a reduction of roughly 25% in general fish harvests by 1875. This beach has 2,500 feet of shoreline open to the public for swimming, fishing and picnics, and has been a designated Blue Wave Beach (America's first environmental certification for beaches) since 2004. Nonetheless, both nations maintained coast guard vessels in the Great Lakes. This is similar to the effect of warmer air dropping snow as it passes over mountain ranges. The influx of parasitic lamprey populations after the development of the Erie Canal and the much later Welland Canal led to the two federal governments of the U.S. and Canada working on joint proposals to control it. How were the Great Lakes of North America formed? The average annual rainfall in the Lake Superior basin is 30 inches (760 millimeters), 31 inches in Lakes Huron and Michigan, and 34 and 36 inches in Lakes Erie and Ontario, respectively. They played a central role in the European colonization and development of North America and for decades have attracted people and industry; Lakes Erie and Ontario and the southern portion of Lake Michigan are now ringed with large population concentrations. [32] Larger ships are confined to working within the lakes. The agreements strengthen protection against abusive water withdrawal practices within the Great Lakes basin. In fact, two major suppliers of fish in the 1830s were the fur trading companies Hudson's Bay Company and the American Fur Company. Saline? Storm-generated waves carve the lakes' ice sheet and create conical mounds through the eruption of water and slush. Their drainage basin of about 295,710 square miles (which includes the areas of the lakes themselves and their connecting waterways) extends approximately 690 miles from north to south and about 860 miles from Lake Superior in the west to Lake Ontario in the east. Surrounding the Great Salt Lake are salt flats, areas where the lake has evaporated, leaving only stretches of white salt. There are five lakes, which are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario and are in general on or near the CanadaUnited States border. This is a result of significant expenditures to date on both infrastructure and technology, and robust regulatory systems that have proven to be, on the whole, quite effective. It's clean and clear freshwater with waves and white sand, cold winters and hot summers" While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Near Collingwood, Ontario, commercial fruit orchards, including a few wineries, exist near the shoreline of southern Nottawasaga Bay. [94] Microscopic pieces of plastic have also been found in drinking water coming from Great Lakes. By the mid-1950s, the lake trout populations of Lakes Michigan and Huron were reduced, with the lamprey deemed largely to blame. The Great Lakes are, from west to east: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario. Possible schemes for bottled water plants and diversion to dry regions of the continent raise concerns. So why are the Great Lakes not considered a freshwater sea when other than the freshwater, they are essentially like any other sea? Laws, Robert R. Bidigare, John E. Dore, et al., Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, (1998), Effect of Phytoplankton Cell Geometry on Carbon Isotopic Fractionation, Vol. While the spotlight on the sport tends to shine brighter on the oceans, here are 10 reasons why the Great Lakes are better. In 1998, the Canadian company Nova Group won approval from the Province of Ontario to withdraw 158,000,000 U.S. gallons (600,000m3) of Lake Superior water annually to ship by tanker to Asian countries. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated in 2007 that the economic impact of the zebra mussel could be about $5billion over the next decade. [127] The International Joint Commission was established in 1909 to help prevent and resolve disputes relating to the use and quality of boundary waters, and to advise Canada and the United States on questions related to water resources. Omissions? The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, described as "the largest investment in the Great Lakes in two decades",[132] was funded at $475million in the U.S. federal government's Fiscal Year 2011 budget, and $300million in the Fiscal Year 2012 budget. An alternate track is via the Illinois River (from Chicago), to the Mississippi, up the Ohio, and then through the TennesseeTombigbee Waterway (a combination of a series of rivers and lakes and canals), to Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. How do the Great Lakes influence the regional climate? [61], The Great Lakes are an important source of fishing. pp. The Great Salt Lake, in the U.S. state of Utah, is the largest saline lake in North America. In the early 21st century, Lake Superior's shores are 91% forested, Lake Huron 68%, Lake Ontario 49%, Lake Michigan 41%, and Lake Erie, where logging and urbanization has been most extensive, 21%. In 1872, a treaty gave access to the St. Lawrence River to the United States and access to Lake Michigan to the Dominion of Canada. [95] High concentrations of microplastics were discovered in 100 percent of the fish that were studied by researchers from the Rochman Lab. Unsurprisingly, the glacier-sourced melt water wasn't very salty. [87][86], Until 1970, mercury was not listed as a harmful chemical, according to the United States Federal Water Quality Administration. Hundreds of ships have met their end on the lakes. The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. Kppen climate classification Dfa (in southern areas) and Dfb (in northern parts)[57] with varying influences from air masses from other regions including dry, cold Arctic systems, mild Pacific air masses from the west, and warm, wet tropical systems from the south and the Gulf of Mexico. The Great Lakes Waterway enables modern travel and shipping by water among the lakes. Drainage through the Ottawa River valley ceased, and outflow from the upper lakes was established by way of the St. Clair and Detroit rivers into Lake Erie. [12] The largest among them is Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, the largest island in any inland body of water in the world. Why is the sea salinity high in the Mediterannean and Red Sea and low in Indonesia and Malaysia? The states have removed dams from rivers where necessary. [68][69] According to the Inland Seas Education Association, on average a new species enters the Great Lakes every eight months. As the slightly warmer, moist air passes over the colder land surface, the moisture often produces concentrated, heavy snowfall that sets up in bands or "streamers". After railroads and surface roads developed, the freight and passenger businesses dwindled and, except for ferries and a few foreign cruise ships, have now vanished. The first of 43 "Great Lakes Areas of Concern" to be formally "de-listed" through successful cleanup was Ontario's Collingwood Harbour in 1994; Ontario's Severn Sound followed in 2003. The first ship to sink in Lake Michigan was Le Griffon, also the first ship to sail the Great Lakes. During World War II, the risk of submarine attacks against coastal training facilities motivated the United States Navy to operate two aircraft carriers on the Great Lakes, USSSable and USSWolverine. The second, the Great Lakes Compact, has been approved by the state legislatures of all eight states that border the Great Lakes as well as the U.S. Congress, and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008.[131]. [121] There are no plans to raise her as the site is being treated as a war grave. Overall, this means it's not going to get saltier over time - it keeps pretty much constant salinity, which is pretty much zero compared to the oceans. In 1996, a rare tropical or subtropical storm was observed forming in Lake Huron, dubbed the 1996 Lake Huron cyclone. While enormous public investments such as the Deep Tunnel projects in Chicago and Milwaukee have greatly reduced the frequency and volume of these events, they have not been eliminated. It has been estimated that the foundational geology that created the conditions shaping the present day upper Great Lakes was laid from 1.1 to 1.2billion years ago,[14][54] when two previously fused tectonic plates split apart and created the Midcontinent Rift, which crossed the Great Lakes Tectonic Zone. This bill, which reauthorized the National Sea Grant Program, contained a line declaring Lake Champlain to be a Great Lake. No, the Saint Lawrence River has. [70][needs update], The alewife first entered the system west of Lake Ontario via 19th-century canals. It was more economical to transport the ingredients for steel to centralized plants rather than to make steel on the spot. Between 2012 and 2019 more than 160 new species have been discovered.[77]. [80] Discharge of toxic substances has been sharply reduced. [114] Several ferries currently operate on the Great Lakes to carry passengers to various islands. Uplift has continued at a rate of about 1 foot (30 centimetres) every 100 years; this is evidenced by the drowned river mouths of western Lakes Erie and Superior. The surrounding region is called the Great Lakes region, which includes the Great Lakes Megalopolis. The Great Lakes are also in question, to me at least. It is generally accepted that Lake Erie reached its present level about 10,000 years ago, Lake Ontario about 7,000 years ago, and Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior some 3,000 years ago. The Great Lakes together form the western part of the St. Lawrence hydrographic system. One of the more common sights on the lakes has been since about 1950 the 1,000-by-105-foot (305 by 32m), 78,850-long-ton (80,120-metric-ton) self-unloader. [93] Plastics in the water break up into very small particles known as microplastics. Why typically people don't use biases in attention mechanism? Did the Golden Gate Bridge 'flatten' under the weight of 300,000 people in 1987? @Sean Humans might be able of doing a lot of things, yes. Has the cause of a rocket failure ever been mis-identified, such that another launch failed due to the same problem? Marine debris. The result of Mount Mazama's climatic eruptions many years ago, Crater Lake offers visitors opportunities for all the normal outdoor activities, like swimming, boating, hiking, and camping, as well as some more . Other protective legislation was passed, but enforcement remained difficult. Can I general this code to draw a regular polyhedron? The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. The Great Lakes system includes five large lakes, one small lake, four connecting channels, and the St. Lawrence Seaway. This system extends generally eastward from the St. Louis River in Minnesota (which flows into Lake Superior), through the lakes and the St. Lawrence River, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean at the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Foreign boats are known as "salties". Major ports on the Great Lakes include Duluth-Superior, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Twin Harbors, Hamilton and Thunder Bay. The Great Lakes receive their water supply from precipitation, which increases from west to east and from north to south. janetcbl. At the same time, Lake Duluth, in the western Lake Superior basin, also drained to the Mississippi.

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