Surficial Sediments of Lake Erie

Abstract

On the basis of extensive echosounding and grab sampling, three major units have been recognized in Lake Erie: till and bedrock, glaciolacustrine clay, and postglacial muds. These units represent the late glacial and postglacial evolution of the basin and occur in an offshore younging sequence. The main basin of the lake is subdivided by residual glacial moraines into four depositional basins: Western, Sandusky, Central, and Eastern basins. The sediment texture has been defined by moment measures (mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis), the trends of which are related to the mixing of two primary grain-size populations in the sand- and clay-size ranges. A third grain-size mode in the silt size, composed of fine quartz with some carbonate, has been recognized. This mode has a modifying effect on the symmetry of the two primary populations and may, to some extent, be sufficiently abundant to behave as a discrete population. The trends in the textural characteristics, particularly skewness and kurtosis, have been utilized to define energy regimes at the sediment–water interface which indicates three distinct sedimentary or hydraulic regions: 1) Western basin region — Fine-grained sediment accretion in shallow water related to an imbalance in sediment budget, with high input loadings of fine-grained sediment, and deficit in coarse materials, with an excess of input over sediment export to the Central basin region. This results in net sediment accretion in shallow water with texture in disequilibrium with environmental energy, which produces mixing and suspension, followed by redeposition; 2) Central basin region — West to East coarsening of sediment in textural equilibrium with hydraulic energy, as it relates to increasing fetch under westerly and southwesterly prevailing winds; 3) Eastern basin region — Deepwater basin with sediments showing decreasing size offshore with increasing water depth. The deepwater sediment is modified by the influx of substantial quantities of the silt-size material derived from shoreline erosion in the north shore of the Central basin region.The interrelationships of parameters indicate textural dependence on mineralogic composition, particularly important being the relationship of clay concentration to mean grain size. This has particular value in modelling the physical behavior of clay-associated geochemical elements such as phosphorus.