Lake Agassiz
See also: Agassiz
The lake Agassiz was an immense lake occupying between thousand-year-old Xe and thousand-year-old VIIe the central part of the continent of North America. Initially postulated by William Keating in 1823, it was baptized after Louis Agassiz had the first bench its origin glacial in 1879.
Formed approximately 11.700 years ago, the lake covered most of the Manitoba, the Western part of the Ontario, part of the Minnesota, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. With its greater width, it could cover up to 440.000 km ², that is to say 25% of more than the Caspian Sea current.
8.500 years ago, the glaciers moved back quickly and the lake Agassiz narrowed, but still covered the plains in the south of the Hudson Bay. Its water started to overflow initially towards the the Mississippi via the river Minnesota, then in the Fleuve the St. Lawrence. Suddenly, approximately 8.200 years ago, water of the lake were spread in Hudson Bay and, in a few months, practically all the lake was emptied in the Northern Atlantique. The researchers estimate that this contribution of glacial water created a brutal cooling of the ocean, opposing the Gulf Stream and generating a fall of temperature of 5° in Europe for several centuries.
Today, the old lake left some vestiges, the Lac Winnipeg, the Lac Winnipegosis, the Lac Manitoba and the Lac of Wood inter alia, but also of the fertile valleys like that of the Red Rivière of North and the Assiniboine.
| Random links: | Sumene | Canton of Ferté-Vidame | Vice-presidency of Burundi | Helen Oxenbury | Point Bernache | Aipaloovik |