The Great Lakes mapped

The Great Lakes are the largest freshwater system on the planet. The five Great Lakes: Superior, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Erie, cover an area of ​​ almost 95 thousand sq mi (244 thousand sq km) and are all connected by many rivers and lakes, creating the Great Lakes are amongst the world’s 15 largest lakes.

Here is the Great Lakes map in the watercolor style created by the Vividmaps.com team using Digital Elevation Model data.

By the saturation of the blue color, you can see that the deepest lake is Superior. Erie has the least mean depth of the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes’ surface area is more extensive than Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont combined.

The Great Lakes contain 5.4 thousand cu mi (22.5 cu km) of surface freshwater on the planet or 6 quadrillion gallons of freshwater (22.7 quadrillion liters), accounting for about 21% of the global’s surface freshwater or 84% of North America’s surface freshwater or more than 90% of the surface freshwater in the United States. This amount of water enough to sink the whole continental United States in approximately 10 feet of water (~3 meters).

The Great Lakes shoreline’s entire length, including islands, is approximately 11 thousand miles; a 6500-mile drive tour around the lakes takes not a single day.

Almost 34 million people in the United States and Canada live in the Great Lakes basin — 8 percent of the U.S. population and approximately 32 percent of Canada’s population. And for more than 40 million people, the Great Lakes is the primary water source.

Approximately 25% of Canadian agricultural production and 7% of American farm production depend on the Great Lakes’ water.