Bathymetry of Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair has been compiled as a component of a NOAA project to rescue Great Lakes lake floor geological and geophysical data and make it more accessible. This project is a cooperative effort between investigators at the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center's Marine Geology and Geophysics Division (NGDC/MGG), the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) and the Canadian Hydrographic Service(CHS). Bathymetric sounding data employed in compiling the one-meter bathymetry (National Geophysical Data Center, 1998) were collected over a 100-year period for purposes of navigation safety and nautical charting by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, the NOAA Coast Survey, and the Canadian Hydrographic Service. These bathymetric data, totaling several hundred thousand soundings, are separated four ways in existing archives: by whether they exist in digital form or reside only on paper sheets; and by whether they were collected by the U. S. or Canada. Final assembly of the new bathymetry has resulted from synthesis of bathymetric data from the four sources. Spacing of data control tracklines ranges from 500 to 2500 meters for the open lake and from 125 to 500 meters for nearshore areas. In preparation for bathymetric contouring, digital soundings were converted to metric units and computer plotted in color according to depth range. Contours in metric units were generated directly on overlays from paper sheets and then reduced to compilation scale and patched in. Compilation sheets were scanned and vectorized; and the resulting digital bathymetric contour data constitutes the primary product. The data were hand contoured by geomorphologists to capture and portray the maximum information available, resulting in a degree of detail not attainable with machine contouring and the density of available data. Bathymetric contours were prepared by geologists using sounding data contained in the paper archives at the scale of the survey sheets (scales ranging from 1: 100,000 to 1: 10, 000); or from sounding data contained in digital data bases at standard scales of either 1: 100,000 or 1: 50,000. Details concerning the methods of compilation are given in the western Lake Erie paper (Holcombe, et al., 1997). Bathymetric contours have been spatially reconciled with the NOAA Coast Survey nominal scale 1:80,000 digital vector shoreline, which by definition coincides with the Lake Erie low water datum, the zero-depth employed for bathymetric surveys and nautical charting.

Lake St. Clair Bathymetric ContoursMore Metadata

Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair Bathymetric ContoursImportant Note: This item is in mature support as of March 2025 and will be retired in July 2025.This feature layer, utilizing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), displays the bathymetric contouring of Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair. Bathymetric contouring shows the depths of landforms below sea level. The bathymetric depths are often shown on maps with contour lines. A contour line represents a corresponding imaginary line on the bottom of a water body that has the same elevation or depth along its entire length.Per NOAA, "NOAA was engaged in a program to compile Great Lakes bathymetric data and make them readily available to the public, especially to the communities concerned with Great Lakes science, pollution, coastal erosion, response to climate changes, threats to lake ecosystems, and health of the fishing industry. This program was managed by NCEI and relied on the cooperation of NOAA/Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, NOAA/National Ocean Service, the Canadian Hydrographic Service, other agencies, and academic laboratories."Note: The purpose of this data is for scientific research, commercial exploration, fishing, and policy & decision-making. These data are NOT intended to be used for navigation. Nautical charts produced and certified by NOAA should be used for navigational purposes. For more information on NOAA's nautical charts go to: NOAA's Office of Coast Survey.Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair Bathymetric ContoursData currency: This cached Esri service is checked monthly for updates from its federal source (Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair)Data modification: NoneFor more information: Bathymetry of Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair PDF ImageFor feedback, please contact: ArcGIScomNationalMaps@esri.comNational Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationPer NOAA, its mission is "To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, ocean, and coasts, to share that knowledge and information with others, and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources."

Bathymetry of Lakes Michigan, Erie, Saint Clair, Ontario and Huron has been compiled as a component of a NOAA project to rescue Great Lakes lake floor geological and geophysical data and make it more accessible. Lake Superior bathymetry partially completed. The present contours and grids have been partially derived and completely compiled here at NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) using a variety of sources of data including the NOS Hydrographic data base and the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) smooth sheets. This project is a cooperative effort between investigators at the NGDC, the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Bathymetric data used for this project have been collected from the Great Lakes in support of nautical charting for at least 150 years by the US Army Corp. of Engineers (before 1970), the NOAA National Ocean Service (after 1970), and the CHS.

This is a polygon layer that represents the shorelines of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, St. Clair River, and the St. Lawrence River and Seaway. The dataset is strictly a cartographic layer intended only for small-scale display (nominally 1:250,000); the data is of unknown origin and source scale.

In 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center (WHCMSC), in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geophysical and sampling survey of the riverbed of the Upper St. Clair River between Port Huron, MI, and Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. The objectives were to define the Quaternary geologic framework of the St. Clair River to evaluate the relationship between morphologic change of the riverbed and underlying stratigraphy. This report presents the geophysical and sample data collected from the St. Clair River, May 29-June 6, 2008 as part of the International Upper Great Lakes Study, a 5-year project funded by the International Joint Commission of the United States and Canada to examine whether physical changes in the St. Clair River are affecting water levels within the upper Great Lakes, to assess regulation plans for outflows from Lake Superior, and to examine the potential effect of climate change on the Great Lakes water levels ( http://www.iugls.org). This document makes available the data that were used in a separate report, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2009-1137, which detailed the interpretations of the Quaternary geologic framework of the region. This report includes a description of the suite of high-resolution acoustic and sediment-sampling systems that were used to map the morphology, surficial sediment distribution, and underlying geology of the Upper St. Clair River during USGS field activity 2008-016-FA . Video and photographs of the riverbed were also collected and are included in this data release. Future analyses will be focused on substrate erosion and its effects on river-channel morphology and geometry. Ultimately, the International Upper Great Lakes Study will attempt to determine where physical changes in the St. Clair River affect water flow and, subsequently, water levels in the Upper Great Lakes.

In 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center (WHCMSC), in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geophysical and sampling survey of the riverbed of the Upper St. Clair River between Port Huron, MI, and Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. The objectives were to define the Quaternary geologic framework of the St. Clair River to evaluate the relationship between morphologic change of the riverbed and underlying stratigraphy. This report presents the geophysical and sample data collected from the St. Clair River, May 29-June 6, 2008 as part of the International Upper Great Lakes Study, a 5-year project funded by the International Joint Commission of the United States and Canada to examine whether physical changes in the St. Clair River are affecting water levels within the upper Great Lakes, to assess regulation plans for outflows from Lake Superior, and to examine the potential effect of climate change on the Great Lakes water levels ...

The Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX) has performed a coastal survey along the MI coasts of Lake Superior, Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron in 2007. The data types collected include bathymetry and topographic lidar point data, true color imagery and hyperspectral imagery. The collection effort follows the coastline and extends 500m inland and 1000m offshore or to laser extinction, whichever comes first. Topographic lidar is collected with 200% coverage, yielding a nominal 1m x 1m post-spacing. Where water conditions permit, the bathymetry lidar data will have a nominal post spacing of 4m x 4m. The true color imagery will have a pixel size approximately 35cm and the hyperspectral imagery will be provided in 1m pixels containing 36 bands between 375 - 1050 nm with 19 nm bandwidth. The final data will be tied to horizontal positions, provided in decimal degrees of latitude and longitude, and are referenced to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). Vertical positions are referenced to the NAD83 ellipsoid and provided in meters. The National Geodetic Survey's (NGS) GEOID03 model is used to transform the vertical positions from ellipsoid to orthometric heights referenced to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88). Once converted to orthometric heights, the data are then converted to the International Great Lakes Datum of 1985 (IGLD85) using the VDatum program from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

The Great Lakes Sediment Database (also known as the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) Sediment Archive) is an archive of data on the sediments of the Great Lakes, their connecting channels, and the St. Lawrence River which was collected by NWRI and in cooperation with other agencies between 1960 and 1975. It is housed in Environment and Climate Change Canada's Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington, Ontario. The data has been subdivided into two groups according to location and purpose: 1.Great Lakes Basin Sediment Data: physical and geochemical data for sediment samples and cores collected lakewide in lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron (including Georgian Bay), Michigan and Superior between 1960 and 1975 by R.L. Thomas, A.L.W. Kemp and C.F.M. Lewis of NWRI. The data includes descriptions of sediment and core properties, grain-size statistics and sediment geochemistry; 2. Nearshore Sediments Data: physical data for samples and cores, bathymetry, and sediment thickness collected in the Canadian nearshore zone of lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron and Georgian Bay between 1960 and 1975. The data includes descriptions of sediment and core properties, grain-size statistics, sediment patterns and x-radiographs of sediment cores. Underwater photographs are also available for Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. The database was prepared to preserve historic and current sediment data and make it available for research, remediation, lake and shoreline management, habitat studies and engineering projects. Because the basin and nearshore surveys were the first systematic and detailed surveys of both zones, their data should also be useful for studies of trends in physical properties, sediment transport, and contamination or trophic levels. The sediment-sample archive serves the same purpose by making historic samples available for analysis of changes in composition or geotechnical properties. Supplemental Information The database was produced by Dr. Norm Rukavina, formerly of NWRI, as an archive of his own sediment data and that of some of his colleagues and associates. Marilyn Dunnett was responsible for the editing of the data and its quality control, and Chris Prokopec for the organization of the database, its metadata description, and the preparation of ArcView maps. Supporting Projects: Great Lakes Action Plan (GLAP)

These files contain topographic and bathymetric lidar data collected by the Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid Total Survey (CHARTS) system along the Lake Huron coast of Michigan in Huron, Sanilac, and St. Clair Counties during August 12-17, 2008. CHARTS integrates topographic and bathymetric lidar sensors, a digital camera, and a hyperspectral scanner on a single remote sensing platform for use in coastal mapping and charting activities. Data coverage generally extends along the coastline from the waterline inland 500 meters (topography) and offshore 1,000 meters or to laser extinction (bathymetry). The topographic lidar sensor has a pulse repetition rate of 9 kHz at 1064 nm (near-infrared wavelength). The bathymetric lidar sensor has a pulse repetition rate of 1 kHz at 532 nm (green wavelength). Native lidar data is not generally in a format accessible to most Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Specialized in-house and commercial software packages are used to process the native lidar data into 3-dimensional positions that can be imported into GIS software for visualization and further analysis. Horizontal positions, provided in decimal degrees of latitude and longitude, are referenced to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). Vertical positions are referenced to the NAD83 ellipsoid and provided in meters. The National Geodetic Survey's (NGS) GEOID03 model is used to transform the vertical positions from ellipsoid to orthometric heights referenced to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88). Upon receipt at the NOAA Coastal Services Center, the data were converted to las format and to ellipsoid heights using GEOID03 for data storage and Digital Coast provisioning purposes. Additionally, the bathymetric lidar data points were classified according to the ASPRS LAS 1.2 classification scheme as 11 (bathymetry) and the topographic last return lidar data points were classified as 1 (unclassified).

The Great Lakes Sediment Database (also known as the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) Sediment Archive) is an archive of data on the sediments of the Great Lakes, their connecting channels, and the St. Lawrence River which was collected by NWRI and in cooperation with other agencies between 1960 and 1975. It is housed in Environment and Climate Change Canada's Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington, Ontario. The data has been subdivided into two groups according to location and purpose: 1.Great Lakes Basin Sediment Data: physical and geochemical data for sediment samples and cores collected lakewide in lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron (including Georgian Bay), Michigan and Superior between 1960 and 1975 by R.L. Thomas, A.L.W. Kemp and C.F.M. Lewis of NWRI. The data includes descriptions of sediment and core properties, grain-size statistics and sediment geochemistry; Nearshore Sediments Data: physical data for samples and cores, bathymetry, and sediment thickness collected in the Canadian nearshore zone of lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron and Georgian Bay between 1960 and 1975. The data includes descriptions of sediment and core properties, grain-size statistics, sediment patterns and x-radiographs of sediment cores. Underwater photographs are also available for Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. The database was prepared to preserve historic and current sediment data and make it available for research, remediation, lake and shoreline management, habitat studies and engineering projects. Because the basin and nearshore surveys were the first systematic and detailed surveys of both zones, their data should also be useful for studies of trends in physical properties, sediment transport, and contamination or trophic levels. The sediment-sample archive serves the same purpose by making historic samples available for analysis of changes in composition or geotechnical properties. Supplemental Information The database was produced by Dr. Norm Rukavina, formerly of NWRI, as an archive of his own sediment data and that of some of his colleagues and associates. Marilyn Dunnett was responsible for the editing of the data and its quality control, and Chris Prokopec for the organization of the database, its metadata description, and the preparation of ArcView maps. Supporting Projects: Great Lakes Action Plan (GLAP)

In 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center (WHCMSC), in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geophysical and sampling survey of the riverbed of the Upper St. Clair River between Port Huron, MI, and Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. The objectives were to define the Quaternary geologic framework of the St. Clair River to evaluate the relationship between morphologic change of the riverbed and underlying stratigraphy. This report presents the geophysical and sample data collected from the St. Clair River, May 29-June 6, 2008 as part of the International Upper Great Lakes Study, a 5-year project funded by the International Joint Commission of the United States and Canada to examine whether physical changes in the St. Clair River are affecting water levels within the upper Great Lakes, to assess regulation plans for outflows from Lake Superior, and to examine the potential effect of climate change on the Great Lakes water levels ( http://www.iugls.org). This document makes available the data that were used in a separate report, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2009-1137, which detailed the interpretations of the Quaternary geologic framework of the region. This report includes a description of the suite of high-resolution acoustic and sediment-sampling systems that were used to map the morphology, surficial sediment distribution, and underlying geology of the Upper St. Clair River during USGS field activity 2008-016-FA . Video and photographs of the riverbed were also collected and are included in this data release. Future analyses will be focused on substrate erosion and its effects on river-channel morphology and geometry. Ultimately, the International Upper Great Lakes Study will attempt to determine where physical changes in the St. Clair River affect water flow and, subsequently, water levels in the Upper Great Lakes.

In 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center (WHCMSC), in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geophysical and sampling survey of the riverbed of the Upper St. Clair River between Port Huron, MI, and Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. The objectives were to define the Quaternary geologic framework of the St. Clair River to evaluate the relationship between morphologic change of the riverbed and underlying stratigraphy. This report presents the geophysical and sample data collected from the St. Clair River, May 29-June 6, 2008 as part of the International Upper Great Lakes Study, a 5-year project funded by the International Joint Commission of the United States and Canada to examine whether physical changes in the St. Clair River are affecting water levels within the upper Great Lakes, to assess regulation plans for outflows from Lake Superior, and to examine the potential effect of climate change on the Great Lakes water levels ( http://www.iugls.org). This document makes available the data that were used in a separate report, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2009-1137, which detailed the interpretations of the Quaternary geologic framework of the region. This report includes a description of the suite of high-resolution acoustic and sediment-sampling systems that were used to map the morphology, surficial sediment distribution, and underlying geology of the Upper St. Clair River during USGS field activity 2008-016-FA . Video and photographs of the riverbed were also collected and are included in this data release. Future analyses will be focused on substrate erosion and its effects on river-channel morphology and geometry. Ultimately, the International Upper Great Lakes Study will attempt to determine where physical changes in the St. Clair River affect water flow and, subsequently, water levels in the Upper Great Lakes.