What are the Great Lakes?
Five lakes that smear across the border of the US and Canada. What are the Great Lakes? Five lakes that smear across the border of the US and Canada. In order of size they are Lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario. As the map opposite shows, they are a mess of shapes and together look like either a particularly nasty case of roadkill or something you’d find on the pavement outside a pub. What’s so great about them? They contain 15 per cent of the earth’s fresh water, for one. They form borders for eight states and one Canadian province. They are lined with beaches, national parks, pretty ports, one great city Chicago and a myriad of other treats. Niagara Falls plunge into the rivers linking Lakes Ontario and Erie. Who got there first? Nomadic tribes of hunters showed up via the long-defunct land bridge between Russia and Alaska, from 25,000 to 70,000 years ago. During the Ice Age, glaciers carved the vast crevasses that, once the glaciers had melted, filled up with wate
Look for place, name, and location as themes of geography. • Compare it: What is it like? Is it like anything else you know of? What is it? • Associate it: What does it remind you of? • Analyze it: What are the Great Lakes made up of besides water? What kinds of pollution exist in our lakes? • Take a stand: How can we help our lakes get better? How are our lakes used and by whom? • Argue for or against it: Take a stand, list reasons why we should or shouldn’t try to clean up our Great Lakes Basin. • Form cooperative groups to complete the cubing activity and Attachment One: Cubing. Use the cubing technique to help students think more critically about the uses of the Great Lakes and the erosion of the ecosystems that arise from it. • Discuss ways all of society, past and present, have contributed to pollution of the ecosystem. Items to highlight are ground water contamination, sewage systems, fertilizers, insecticides, industrial accidental and illegal dumping such as spent oil and rele
