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The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border.The five lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario (though hydrologically, Michigan and Huron are a single body of water; they are joined by the Straits of Mackinac).
The average lake on Earth has the mean depth 41.8 meters (137.14 feet) [9] The Caspian Sea ranks much further down the list on mean depth, as it has a large continental shelf (significantly larger than the oceanic basin that contains its greatest depths). Of the 127 registered lakes; 67 are known to be cryptodepressions.
Lake Michigan (/ ˈ m ɪ ʃ ɪ ɡ ən / ⓘ MISH-ig-ən) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America.It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume [5] (1,180 cu mi; 4,900 km 3) and depth (923 ft; 281 m) after Lake Superior and the third-largest by surface area (22,405 sq mi; 58,030 km 2), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
It is the shallowest of the Great Lakes with an average depth of 10 fathoms 3 feet or 63 ft (19 m) [7] and a maximum depth of 35 fathoms (210 ft; 64 m) [7] [8] Because Erie is the shallowest, it is also the warmest of the Great Lakes, [17] and in 1999 this almost became a problem for two nuclear power plants which require cool lake water to ...
However, because it is also the deepest lake, [6] with a maximum depth of 1,642 metres (5,387 feet; 898 fathoms), [1] Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake by volume, containing 23,615.39 km 3 (5,670 cu mi) of water [1] or 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water, [7] [8] more than all of the North American Great Lakes combined. [9]
Lake Superior has fewer dissolved nutrients relative to its water volume than the other Great Lakes and so is less productive in terms of fish populations and is an oligotrophic lake. This is a result of the underdeveloped soils found in its relatively small watershed. [ 21 ]
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A NOAA schematic of the hydrology of the Great Lakes depicts Lake Michigan–Huron as a single lake with three basins: Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay. [4] The connection between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron through the Straits of Mackinac is 5 miles (8 km) wide [11] and 120 feet (37 m) deep. [12]