Puslinch Lake - Largest NA Kettle EarthCache
Puslinch Lake - Largest NA Kettle
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(other)
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Puslinch Lake is a kettle lake located in Wellington County,
Ontario, Canada. The lake is a glacialfluvial feature formed in the
landscape during the last continental glaciation about 13,000 years
ago. It formed when a large block of ice calving from the front of
the receding glacier and left a large hole in the landscape.
Puslinch Lake is not just any kettle lake, but the largest kettle
lake in Canada and North America.
Kettles are glacilafluvial features formed in the landscape as a
result of large blocks of ice calving from the front of the
receding glacier and becoming partially to wholly buried by outwash
sediments from the glacier. Glacial outwash is generated when
streams of meltwater flow away from the glacier and are deposited
as broad outwash plains. When the blocks of ice imbedded in the
outwash plain melt, a depression or kettle hole is formed in the
landscape. If the elevation of the depression is below the water
table, the result is a kettle lake. Most kettle holes are less than
two kilometers in diameter, although some in the U.S. Midwest
exceed ten kilometers. Puslinch Lake is the largest kettle lake in
Canada and North America spanning 160 hectares (380 acres). Given
that the continential ice sheet was estimated to be on the order of
2 miles thick (about 5 km high), imagine the size of the chunk of
ice that once filled this lake. The lake is relatively shallow,
typically less than 2 m in depth. The maximum depth is
approximately 5.5 m corresponding to only about 0.4% of the entire
lake. The lake has very limited inflow and outflow. Consequently it
sometimes undergoes periods of eutrophication with associated algal
bloom, low oxygen level, and associated fish kills. There are 16
species of fish present in the lake; some have been introduced. The
lake supports a population of banded killifish, one of only a few
known populations in the whole Grand River basin.
To log this earthcache e-mail the answers to the three
questions to the cache owner, before posting your log.
1. Estimate the total volume of water in Puslinch Lake assuming an
average depth of 2 m.
2. Measure the elevation of the lake with your GPS and calculate
the elevation of the bottom of the lake at the deepest part.
3. Assuming an average annual precipitation of 800 mm falling on
the lake (assuming no evaporation) calculate the volume of water
that flows out of the lake each year.
I ask only that you physically visit the cache site and log the
cache on the day you visited.
This cache has been placed by a Central Ontario
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Additional Hints
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