Great Lakes ecoregion (2024)

FAQs

Great Lakes ecoregion? ›

The Great Lakes system includes five large lakes, one small lake, four connecting channels, and the St. Lawrence Seaway. The large lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. They hold about 90% of the freshwater in the United States and approximately 20% of the world's freshwater supply.

Just like ocean coasts, the coasts of the Great Lakes feature a variety of ecosystems, such as beaches, dunes and wetlands, but with the notable exception of hosting freshwater species.

The Mixedwood Plains Ecozone is endowed with abundant freshwater resources, including four of the Great Lakes -- Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario -- and the St. Lawrence River from Kingston to Quebec City. These Great Lakes constitute nearly 20% of the world's fresh water.

The Midwest Canadian Shield Forests ecoregion is an immense area stretching from the north shore of Lake Superior in Ontario northwestward through western Ontario and central Manitoba to the south shore of Lake Athabasca in northern Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The Western Great Lakes forests is a terrestrial ecoregion as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. It is within the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome of North America.

The Great Lakes are a crown jewel of North America, holding nearly one-fifth of the planet's surface freshwater. They have nearly 11,000 miles of shoreline and harbor, more than 530,000 acres of coastal wetlands and the world's largest freshwater delta (in Lake St. Clair).

The Great Lakes region of Northern America is a binational Canadian–American region centered around the Great Lakes that includes the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and the Canadian province of Ontario.

The Lake Erie Lowland ecoregion is the southernmost ecoregion in Canada, with its southern limits at the same latitude as northern California. It is highly influenced by the moderating effect of the lower Great Lakes. The landscape is generally flat, with the exception of the Niagara Escarpment.

It includes parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ontario and Quebec. All together, the Great Lakes contain the 9,402 miles of shoreline and 94,710 total square miles of surface area.

The five lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, and they are in general on or near the Canada–United States border. Hydrologically, Michigan and Huron are a single body of water joined at the Straits of Mackinac. The Great Lakes Waterway enables modern travel and shipping by water among the lakes.

What ecoregion is Michigan? ›

Broadly, Michigan spans the transition between the conifer-dominated Northern (Boreal) Forests (which contains the entire Upper Peninsula and 7 of the ecoregions in the Lower Peninsula) and the more southerly, hardwood-dominated Eastern Temperate Forests (containing the remaining 11 ecoregions.)

Lake Superior is the world's largest freshwater lake by area (31,700 mi2 /82,100 km2). It is also the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes, with a maximum depth of 406 meters (1,332 feet). By most measures, it is the healthiest of all the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes receive their water supply from precipitation, which increases from west to east and from north to south. 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.

Watershed's surface: 209,000 square kms. Lake Superior is the largest, cleanest, and wildest of all the Great Lakes.

The mussels eat the plankton in the water. Those plankton are the dominant light absorbers. So remove plankton, and the water gets a lot clearer.

The system is invaluable as the source of drinking water for more than 40 million people in the U.S. and Canada. The lakes directly generate more than 1.5 million jobs and $60 billion in wages annually. They're also home for more than 3,500 plant and animal species, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

A pond or lake ecosystem includes biotic (living) plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (nonliving) physical and chemical interactions. Pond and lake ecosystems are a prime example of lentic ecosystems. Lentic refers to stationary or relatively still water, from the Latin lentus, which means sluggish.

The Great Lakes are complex ecosystems. There is a natural coupling between river and Great Lakes systems. Many species and species assemblages or communities are co-adapted to features of these complex and coupled systems. Lake sturgeon are members of a group of species referred to as “Benthivores”.

Freshwater ecosystems are a subset of Earth's aquatic ecosystems. They include lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, springs, bogs, and wetlands. They can be contrasted with marine ecosystems, which have a larger salt content.

The goal of the Great Lakes Freshwater Ecosystem Initiative (FEI) is to target the most significant environmental challenges affecting Great Lakes water quality and ecosystem health by delivering on Canada's commitments under the Canada-United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA).