Excerpt
THE Great Lakes shoreline is a significant, complex, and dynamic natural resource system providing opportunities for recreational, residential, commercial, and industrial development. Including connecting channels and islands, the Great Lakes shoreline of Canada and the U.S. measures 18,100 km (11,200 mi). Yet, many reaches of this shoreline also pose hazards to some development. Flooding and erosion cause ongoing problems, particularly when lake levels are high. Damages during a high water episode in 1985–86 have been estimated to exceed $290 million on the U.S. shores of the Great Lakes (1) and $60 million on the Canadian shoreline (3).
Kreutzwiser (5, G, 7) has shown how indiscriminate development of hazard-susceptible shores and inconsistent application of municipal development controls affect flood and erosion damages. For the Canadian shore of Lake Erie, for example, damage (in constant 1985 dollars) increased from …
Footnotes
M. Jan Slaats, a graduate student in the Department of Geography, University of Guelph, was planning coordinator at the Napanee Region Conservation Authority. Reid D. Kreutzwiser is professor of geography at the University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, NZG 2WI. The support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged
- Copyright 1993 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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