Briefly describe the major topographic features (wetlands, marshes, mountain ranges, dunes, landscapes, etc...).


Long Point is an erosion deposit sand spit formation (either a peninsula, or series of islands and shoals during episodes of high lake levels) that extends some 32 km into the deepest part of Lake Erie from its north shore. It is the largest of this kind of geomorphological formation in the Laurentian Great Lakes. The Point has a diverse mosaic of land and water habitats including woodlands and shrubs, sand dunes and bluffs, marshes and small ponds, lakeshore and beaches. The inner Long Point Bay between the spit and the mainland has a surface area of about 78 km2. It is rather uniformly shallow with an average depth of about 2m and a rich growth of aquatic macrophtyes covering about 90% of the area. This makes the bay a productive sports fishery and a staging area for migratory waterfowl that is of continental significance.


Big Creek drains a 730 km2 watershed into the inner bay through the Big Creek marsh at its mouth, and is the major tributary stream. The adjacent mainland (to the inner bay) is a sandy plain supporting diverse agricultural crops and livestock production, and remnant tracts of mature deciduous forest. The forest, part of "Carolinian Canada", is the northern edge of the deciduous forest biome of North America, supporting species of plants and animals that occur in Canada only along the north shore of Lake Erie.

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