Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario (French: lac Ontario), bounded on the north by Ontario and on the south by Ontario's Niagara Peninsula and by New York State, is one of the five Great Lakes of North America.

Name

The name of the lake is derived from Skanadario, an Iroquois word meaning either "beautiful lake" or "sparkling water". The Canadian province of Ontario was later named after the lake.

Previous to its current name, the lake was identified in some maps under different names. In a map drawn in the Relation des Jésuites (1662-1663), the lake has the legend "Lac Ontario ou des Iroquois" and in smaller type "Ondiara". A French map produced in 1712 (currently in the Canadian Museum of Civilization), created by military engineer Jean-Baptiste de Couagne, identified Lake Ontario as "Lac Frontenac".

Geography

Lake Ontario (43°30'N, 78°00'W) is the eastern-most and smallest in surface area (7,340 square miles, 18,960 km²) of the Great Lakes, although it exceeds Lake Erie in volume (393 cubic miles, 1639 km³). It is the 14th largest lake in the world and has a shoreline 712 miles (1146 km) long.

Lake Ontario has an elevation of 243 feet (74 m) above sea level. Its length is 193 miles (311 km), and its breadth is 53 miles (85 km). The average depth is 283 feet (86 m), with a maximum depth of 802 feet (244 m).

Its primary inlet is the Niagara River (from Lake Erie) and primary outlet is the St. Lawrence River. Other major rivers which flow into it include the Humber River; Trent River; the Cataraqui River; the Genesee River; the Oswego River; the Black River; and the Salmon River. Other notable geographic features include Hamilton Harbour, the Bay of Quinte, the Toronto Islands, and the Thousand Islands. The Bay of Quinte separates most of Prince Edward County from the north shore except for a 2 mile (3km) stretch of land connecting it to the mainland. The largest island on the lake is Wolfe Island located near Kingston at St. Lawrence River entrance. It is accessed by summer ferries from both Canada and the U.S.

A portion of the Great Lakes Waterway passes through the lake, which is accessible from upstream by the Welland Canal and from downstream by the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Trent-Severn Waterway for pleasure boats connects Lake Ontario at the Bay of Quinte to Georgian Bay of Lake Huron passing through the inland Lake Simcoe. The Rideau Waterway, also for pleasure boats, connects Lake Ontario at Kingston to the Ottawa River at Ottawa.

A large conurbation called the Golden Horseshoe (including major cities of Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario) is on the Canadian side at the western end of the lake. Close to 9 million people or over a quarter of Canada's population lives within the watershed of Lake Ontario.

The American shore of the lake is largely rural, with the exception of Rochester, New York. The city of [[Syracuse, New York | Syracuse]] is not actually located on the lakeshore but 20 miles (30 km) inland and is connected to it by canal. Approximately 2 million people live in Lake Ontario's American watershed.

A high-speed passenger/vehicle ferry service across Lake Ontario between Toronto and Rochester was launched on June 17, 2004, using the vessel Spirit of Ontario I. The service was officially canceled in January 2006 after losing money for two seasons.

On the south shore, breezes off the cool lake tend to retard fruit bloom until the spring frost danger is past, and the area has become a major fruit growing area, with apples, cherries, pears, plums, and peaches grown in many commercial orchards on both sides of Rochester. The Canadian part of the south shore, known as the Niagara Peninsula is also a major fruit-growing and wine-making area. Apples are grown on the lake's north shore, around Cobourg.

Geology

The lake was carved out of soft, weak Silurian rocks by the Wisconsonian ice age glacier, which expanded the preglacial Ontarian River valley of approximately the same orientation. The material that was pushed southward was piled in central and western New York in the form of drumlins, kames, and moraines, which reorganized entire drainage systems. As the glacier retreated from New York, it still dammed the present St. Lawrence valley, so that the lake was at a higher level. This state is known as Lake Iroquois. During that time the lake drained through present-day Syracuse, New York into the Mohawk River. The old shoreline that was created during this lake stage can be easily recognized by the (now dry) beaches and wave-cut hills 10 to 25 miles (15 to 40 km) south of the present shoreline.

When the glacier finally melted from the St. Lawrence valley, the outlet was below sea level, and the lake became for a short time a bay of the ocean. Gradually the land rebounded from the release of the weight of about 6,500 feet (2000 m) of ice that had been stacked on it. It is still rebounding about 12 inches (30 cm) per century in the St. Lawrence area. Since the ice left that area last, that is the area where the most rapid rebound still is occurring. This means that the lake bed is gradually tilting southward, inundating the south shore and turning river valleys into bays. Both north and south shores have shoreline erosion, but the tilting amplifies this effect on the south shore, causing loss to property owners.

History

The lake was a border between the Huron and their vassals and the Iroquois Confederacy in pre-European times. The first documented European to reach the lake was Étienne Brûlé in 1615. Artifacts which are believed to be of Norse origin have been found in the area, indicating possible earlier visits by Europeans, but as yet unproven. A series of trading posts was established by both the British and French, such as Fort Oswego in 1722 and Fort Rouillé 1750 (in Toronto). After the French and Indian War, all the forts were under British control. This remained the case even in the years following the American Revolution until the signing of the Jay Treaty in 1794, when forts on the U.S. side of lake became American. Permanent, non-military European settlement began during the American Revolution and occurred before the other great lakes. It became a hub of commercial activity following the War of 1812 with canal building on both sides of the border and was heavily traveled by lake steamers, which reached their peak activity in the mid-19th century before competition from railway lines.

Ecology

Effects of the climate on the lake

The lake has a natural seiche rhythm of eleven minutes. The seiche effect normally is only about 3/4 inches (2 cm) but can be greatly amplified by earth movement, winds, and atmospheric pressure changes.

Because of its great depth, the lake rarely freezes in winter. The winters of 1934 and 1976 were the only times the lake had ice cover within historic time.

When the cold winds of winter pass over the warmer water of the lake, they pick up moisture and drop it as lake effect snow. Since the prevailing winter winds are from the northwest, the southern and southeastern shoreline of the lake is referred to as the snowbelt. In some winters the area between Oswego and Pulaski may receive twenty or more feet (600 cm) of snowfall. Lake effect snow often reaches inland to Syracuse, which often takes the crown for the most winter snowfall accumulation of any city in the United States and, on average, receives more snow annually than any other major city in the world.

Environmental concerns

During modern times the lake became heavily polluted from industrial chemicals, untreated sewage, including phosphates in laundry detergents, and agricultural fertilizers and chemicals. By the 1960s and 1970s the lake was dying, with frequent algal blooms during the summer, which killed off large quantities of fish, and left stinking piles of filamentous algae and dead fish along the shores, at times becoming so thick that waves could not break.

Environmental concerns forced a cleanup of industrial and municipal wastes through better treatment plants. Phosphates were banned from detergents, and farm runoff was regulated more closely. Today Lake Ontario has recovered much of its pristine quality, and it is boasted that walleyes, which are a sort of marker of clean water, now abound in its waters. The lake has also become an important sports fishery, with introduced coho and chinook salmon also thriving.

The lake has been plagued with problems of invasive species, including the lamprey and zebra mussels. The lamprey is controlled by poisoning in the juvenile stage in the streams where they breed. Another recent problem had been E. coli bacteria. Other chemicals found in the lake are DDTs, PCBs, aramite, lead, mirex, mercury, and carbon tetrachloride. There is also large amounts of benzo(a)pyrene and human-made pesticides.

Trivia

A feature on Saturn's moon Titan, which may possibly be a sea of liquid methane, has been named Ontario Lacus after Lake Ontario and is of similar size.

Lake Ontario is the only Great Lake that does not border the state of Michigan

External links

Great Lakes | Saint Lawrence Seaway

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