Lake Winnipeg

Andréanne Désaulniers-Racine

                                                                                           Group 41

 

 

 

Lake Winnipeg is located in the province of Manitoba and is one of the largest lake in the world. It’s watershed is 982 900 square kilometers and covers parts of four canadian provinces and four states of the U.S.A. The most important rivers that flow into the lake are the Winnipeg River, the Saskatchewan River and the Red River. These three rivers represent more than 60% of the inflowing water of Lake Winnipeg. There is also the Poplar River, the Berens River, the Pigeon River, the Manigotagan River, the Dauphin River, the Fisher River and the Icelandic River that flow into Lake Winnipeg. Surprisingly, there is only the Nelson River that drains the lake. It flows into the Hudson Bay’s watershed, an other important watershed in Canada. It takes between 3 to 5 years for the water to pass through the lake. It is considered quite fast for a lake this large. In comparison, it takes 191 years in Lake Superior.

 

Manitoba Hydro uses Lake Winnipeg to produce electricity. They built a powerplant on the Nelson River in 1976 to use the outflow of the lake. Today, Lake Winnipeg is the third largest hydro-electric reservoir in the entire world with an area of 24 514km2.

 

 

 

Lake Winnipeg can be divided in two basins, one in the north of the lake and the other in the south. The northern one is deeper and larger than the southern one. The average depth is 9 meters in the southern basin and 13.3 meters in the northern one. The average depth of the entire lake is 12 meters which is shallower than most large lakes in the world. The Narrows seperate the two basins and make the water from the southern basin flows toward the north into the northern basin.

 

https://www.gov.mb.ca/waterstewardship/water_quality/lake_winnipeg/facts.html