8850 Form Regions 2016-2023

Music, what's so great about the Great Lakes? They're known as America's inland seas. The North American Great Lakes - Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior - are so massive that they border eight states and contain 23 quadrillion litres of water. That's enough to cover the land area of the contiguous United States three meters deep. These vast bodies of water span forests, grassland, and wetland habitats, supporting a region that's home to over 3,500 species. - But how did such a vast and unique geological feature come to be? The story begins near the end of the last ice age, over ten thousand years ago, a time when the climate was warming and the glaciers that cloaked the Earth's surface began their slow retreat. These immense ice sheets carved out a series of basins. Those basins filled with water as the ice began to melt, creating the world's largest area of freshwater lakes. - Over time, channels developed between these basins, and water began to flow in an ongoing exchange that persists to this day. In fact, today the interconnected Great Lakes contain almost 20% of the world's supply of fresh surface water. The water's journey begins in the far north of Lake Superior, which is the deepest, coldest, and clearest of the lakes, containing half the system's water. Lake Superior sinks to depths of 406 meters, creating a unique and diverse ecosystem that includes more than 80 fish species. - A given drop of water spends on average 200 years in this lake before flowing into Lake Michigan or Lake Huron, linked by the Straits of Mackinac. These two lakes are technically one. To the west lies Lake Michigan, the third largest of the lakes by surface area. Water slowly moves through its cul-de-sac shape and encounters the world's...