Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands Ecoregion

The Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands region extends along the south shores of

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...

and

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border ...

and the

St. Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connecting ...

Lake Champlain Lake Champlain ( ; french: Lac Champlain) is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the US states of New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. The New York portion of t ...

, and south down the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. It is primarily within the state of New York, with smaller portions in

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, and

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. In the north it meets the Mixedwood Plains Ecozone of Canada in eastern Ontario and southern Quebec. It is mostly

temperate deciduous forest Temperate deciduous or temperate broad-leaf forests are a variety of temperate forest 'dominated' by trees that lose their leaves each year. They are found in areas with warm moist summers and cool winters. The six major areas of this forest type ...

and agricultural land. It is one of the 104 Level III ecoregions that occur within the United States, and one of the 35 that comprise the Eastern Temperate Forest Level 1 Ecoregion. This classification system was developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Description

This region was glaciated during the last ice age, and contains prominent glacial features including till and drumlins, as well as the valleys containing the Finger Lakes. Part of the area was covered by

Glacial Lake Iroquois Glacial Lake Iroquois was a prehistoric proglacial lake that existed at the end of the last ice age approximately 13,000 years ago. The lake was essentially an enlargement of the present Lake Ontario that formed because the St. Lawrence River down ...

, while regions further to the east were flooded under the Champlain Sea. At one point during the melting of the glaciers, the Great Lakes drained down the Hudson River to the Atlantic Ocean.

Natural history

This area is mostly

, dominated by trees including maple, beech and oak. Unlike forests further to the north, southern tree species such as hickory also occur (see Bitternut hickory and

Shagbark hickory ''Carya ovata'', the shagbark hickory, is a common hickory in the Eastern United States and southeast Canada. It is a large, deciduous tree, growing well over tall, and can live more than 350 years. The tallest measured shagbark, located in Sa ...

). Many other plant and animal species reach their northern limits in this ecoregion. A few more examples follow. The wetland plant, arrow arum (''

Peltandra virginica ''Peltandra virginica'' is a plant of the arum family known as green arrow arum and tuckahoe. It is widely distributed in wetlands in the eastern United States, as well as in Quebec, Ontario, and Cuba.Whigham, Dennis F., Robert L. Simpson and Ma ...

'') reaches the St. Lawrence River and the Richelieu River. The

bog turtle The bog turtle (''Glyptemys muhlenbergii'') is a critically endangered species of semiaquatic turtle in the family Emydidae. The species is endemic to the eastern United States. It was first scientifically described in 1801 after an 18th-century ...

(''Clemmys muhlenbergii'') reaches the southern shores of Lake Ontario, while the

eastern box turtle The eastern box turtle (''Terrapene carolina carolina'') is a subspecies within a group of hinge-shelled turtles normally called box turtles. ''T. c. carolina'' is native to the eastern part of the United States. The eastern box turtl ...

reaches the southern shores of Lake Erie. Along the shores of the lakes and rivers, there are significant areas of

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The p ...

, principally

marshes A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...

and swamps. Some of the many significant natural areas include El Dorado Beach Preserve on Lake Ontario, the Chaumont Barrens alvar grassland, and the

Rome Sand Plains Rome Sand Plains is a pine barrens about west of the city center of Rome in Oneida County in central New York. It consists of a mosaic of sand dunes rising about above low peat bogs that lie between the dunes. The barrens are covered with mix ...

. Large areas of this forest have been cleared for agriculture, particularly dairy farms and row crops. The presence of the Great Lakes moderates the climate, but increases snowfall. Major cities in this region include Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany.

Ecoregion classification

There can be some problems with understanding the naming of this ecological region, since the Canadian government has its own classification system of ecozones, which can have different names. In this case, the Mixedwood Plains occur on the Canadian side of the border while the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands occur on the American side. Hence, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation has worked toward giving each ecological region of North America a consistent name. In the CEC system, this ecoregion is named the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands, and is identified as region 8.1.1. In the west it meets ecoregion 8.1.2, the Lake Erie Lowland. In the east it meets 5.3.1, the North Appalachian and Atlantic Maritime Highlands. In northern New York, there are two high altitude areas, one being the Adirondacks, that are colder and so fall within ecoregion 5.3.1. In addition the World Wildlife Fund developed its own classification system, in which much of this region is called the

Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests The Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests is a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest ecoregion of North America, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. It lies mostly in south and eastern Ontario and Quebec in Canada, and Upstate New York and Vermon ...

References

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Images

File:Lakes Erie and Ontario - satellite.jpg, Lake Ontario and the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands from a satellite. Note dark green of Adirondack forests to right. Image:Late Fall in the Adirondack Mountains.jpg, Satellite image of the region during late autumn. Image:New York Relief 1.jpg, This relief map shows the lowlands in the centre of this ecoregion, and the Mohawk Valley linking to the Hudson River. File:Erie Canal on openstreetmap.png, Current route of the Erie Canal. File:Canadice Lake in the Finger Lakes .jpg, Canadice Lake is one of the Finger Lakes. It is surrounded by the Hemlock-Canadice State Forest. Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests in the United States Ecoregions of the United States Plant communities of New York (state) Regions of New York (state)