Geography Quest: The Great Lakes System & The St. Lawrence Seaway Edition

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Quick Facts on The Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are glacier formed.
The lakes do have an outflow. They flow into Lake Erie, over Niagara Falls, into Lake Ontario and on out to sea by the St. Lawrence River.
The water level is controlled for flooding, but does not provide relief for extreme conditions. The levels are controlled at Sault St. Marie, the upper Niagara River, and the St. Lawrence River at Cornwall , Ontario. You can find out more about lake levels at the Great Lakes Coalition. They are somewhat biased in their view. You might want to hit a few resources for information on this controversial topic.

Facts about Niagara Falls website- tons of fun and history on this site including the volume of the water going over the falls
Four of the five Great Lakes drain into the Niagara River, (Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie) before emptying into Lake Ontario. These five Great Lakes make up almost one-fifth of the world’s fresh water supply.
Niagara Falls can produce over 4 million kilowatts of electricity, which is shared by the United States and Canada (that’s where our electricity originates- if we are pulling from the grid. Otherwise, it’s the good ol’ sun).
The water falls at 32 feet per second over the falls, hitting the base of the falls with 280 tons of force at the American and Bridal Veil Falls and 2,509 tons of force at the Horseshoe Falls. There is a physics lesson somewhere in this fact- I’m certain!

The Cape Vincent Light marks the entrance to the St. Lawrence River from lake Ontario. (see picture above)
Map of the River showing the International and Canadian sections of the route to the Atlantic
How Locks Work– the other pictures above are of the Eisenhower Lock on the St. Lawrence. We went camping there last summer and enjoyed first hand the ships going through the lock around the clock. Very noisy

If you joined for this week’s Geography Quest, please let me know something cool you learned this week. Did you make a map? Let us know!