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 Waterway lake freighters to travel from the system's saltwater outlet to its far interior. The Waterway has larger locks and deeper drafts than the lower Seaway, limiting large freighters to the four lakes upstream of the Welland Canal and Lake Ontario and similarly restricting passage beyond the canal by larger ocean vessels. The two waterways are often jointly and simply referred to as the "St. Lawrence Seaway", since the Great Lakes, together with the St. Lawrence River, comprise a single navigable body of freshwater linking the Atlantic Ocean to the continental interior. Shipping channels separate upbound traffic from downbound traffic. The