Geology topics

Research about Lake Erie, Lake Ontario

Source-linked reports with geographic coverage including Lake Erie, Lake Ontario.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2025

Dispersal and survival of sea lamprey in Lake Erie and connected waterways

Invasive sea lamprey inhabiting the North American Laurentian Great Lakes are the target of the world’s longest running vertebrate invasive species control program. However, metapopulation dynamics comprising survival and dispersal during the sea lampreys’ lake-resident life stages are poorly understood. We applied acoustic telemetry and continuous-time multistate capture-recapture modeling to address this knowledge gap in Lake Erie. We acoustic-tagged sea lamprey (n = 619) and deployed acoustic receivers into all known connected waterways containing larval sea lamprey rearing habitat (n = 23), including the Detroit River (connecting Lake Erie to Lake Huron) and distributaries to Lake Ontario. Distribution of tagged sea lamprey to putative spawning waterways was shaped by heterogeneous stream attractiveness and distance-limited dispersal. Using parameter estimates from our capture-recapture model and simulation, we predicted survival and dispersal outcomes for a hypothetical sea lamprey population evenly distributed throughout Lake Erie at the beginning of January (34% pre-spawn mortality, 45% dispersal into Lake Erie tributaries, 19% dispersal into the Detroit River, and 2% dispersal into Lake Ontario). The methodology we applied may be widely useful for investigating dispersal and survival of aquatic organisms.

Lake Erie, Lake Ontario↗

USGS2022

Predicting physical and geomorphic habitat associated with historical lake whitefish and cisco spawning locations in Lakes Erie and Ontario

The Great Lakes basin was historically populated by multiple, coevolved coregonine species, but much of that diversity has been lost. In Lakes Erie and Ontario, both lake whitefish ( Coregonus clupeaformis ) and cisco ( Coregonus artedi ) occurred in high numbers before habitat degradation, overfishing, invasive species, and other factors caused significant declines. There is growing interest in restoring these populations, and suggested actions include restoration of critical habitats such as spawning habitat. Unfortunately, our current understanding of lake whitefish and cisco spawning habitat characteristics and locations in these lakes is limited. To highlight areas of potential importance for conservation and restoration, we used random forest models and data on historical spawning locations to predict lake whitefish and cisco spawning habitats based on hypothesized key factors including wind fetch, ice cover duration, distance from 1st and 6th order tributaries, and lake bottom substrate. Our model accurately predicted spawning habitat locations for 71% and 54% of cases for lake whitefish and cisco, respectively. Fetch was the most important variable in the lake whitefish model, with spawning habitats being most likely to occur in regions of low to moderate fetch. Cisco spawning habitats were most likely to occur in areas of relatively low fetch near a 1st order stream. We used these models to predict spawning habitat locations for both species across Lakes Erie, Ontario, and St. Clair. Our results improve our understanding of lake whitefish and cisco spawning habitat characteristics and will aid in the spatial prioritization of actions to restore these native fishes.

Lake Erie, Lake Ontario↗

USGS1994

Seismic images of a tectonic subdivision of the Greenville Orogen beneath lakes Ontario and Erie

New seismic data from marine air-gun and Vibroseis profiles in Lake Ontario and Lake Erie provide images of subhorizontal Phanerozoic sediments underlain by a remarkable series of easterly dipping reflections that extends from the crystalline basement to the lower crust. These reflections are interpreted as structural features of crustal-scale subdivisions within the Grenville Orogen. Broadly deformed, imbricated, and overlapping thrust sheets within the western Central Metasedimentary Belt are succeeded to the west by a complex zone of easterly dipping, apparent thrust faults that are interpreted as a southwest subsurface extension of the boundary zone between the Central Metasedimentary Belt and the Central Gneiss Belt. The interpreted Central Metasedimentary Belt boundary zone has a characteristic magnetic anomaly that provides a link from the adjacent ends of lakes Ontario and Erie to structures exposed 150&ensp;km to the north. Less reflective, west-dipping events are interpreted as structures within the eastern Central Gneiss Belt. The seismic interpretation augments current tectonic models that suggest the exposed ductile structures formed at depth as a result of crustal shortening along northwest-verging thrust faults. Relatively shallow reflections across the boundary region suggest local, Late Proterozoic extensional troughs containing post-Grenville sediments, preserved possibly as a result of pre-Paleozoic reactivation of basement structures.

Lake Erie, Lake Ontario↗

USGS1992

Seismic images of a Grenvillian terrane boundary

A series of gently dipping reflection zones extending to mid-crustal depths is recorded by seismic data from Lakes Ontario and Erie. These prominent reflection zones define a broad complex of southeast-dipping ductile thrust faults in the interior of the Grenville orogen. One major reflection zone provides the first image of a proposed Grenvillian suture—the listric boundary zone between allochthonous terranes of the Central Gneiss and Central Metasedimentary belts. Curvilinear bands of reflections that may represent "ramp folds" and "ramp anticlines" that originally formed in a deep crustal-scale duplex abut several faults. Vertical stacking of some curvilinear features suggests coeval or later out-of-sequence faulting of imbricated and folded thrust sheets. Grenvillian structure reflections are overlain by a thin, wedge-shaped package of shallow-dipping reflections that probably originates from sediments deposited in a local half graben developed during a period of post-Grenville extension. This is the first seismic evidence for such extension in this region, which could have occurred during terminal collapse of the Grenville orogen, or could have marked the beginning of pre-Appalachian continental rifting.

Lake Erie, Lake Ontario↗