Western Great Lakes forests Western Great Lakes forests The Western Great Lakes forests is a terrestrial ecoregion as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. It is within the Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests ecozone of North America, in the United States' states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. The Western Great Lakes forests, in large part, lie in the northwestern Great Lakes Basin near the shores of Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, including the entire Upper peninsula of Michigan and large parts of Northern Wisconsin, around Lake Superior into much of northern Minnesota and a
Great Lakes these waterways is heavy. Pleasure boats can also enter or exit the Great Lakes by way of the Erie Canal and Hudson River in New York. The Erie Canal connects to the Great Lakes at the east end of Lake Erie (at Buffalo, New York) and at the south side of Lake Ontario (at Oswego, New York). In 2009, the lakes contained 84% of the surface freshwater of North America; if the water were evenly distributed over the entire continent's land area, it would reach a depth of 1.5 meters (5 feet). The source of water levels in the lakes