Southern Great Lakes forests Southern Great Lakes forests The Southern 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 the central northeastern United States and extends into southeast central Canada. This area includes the southern half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, and much of Indiana and Ohio. It also extends through the southern half of Southwest Ontario from Windsor to Toronto and into Pennsylvania and New York on the southern rims of lakes Erie and Ontario. This region is characterized by warm-to-hot summers and mild-to-cold, snowy winters. This
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