Talk:Niagara Escarpment

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Untitled

There's disagreement in the text about the location and extent of the Niagara Escarpment, especially in the United States. I'm also worried about a slight Canadian bias to the article. Someone knowledgeable should fix both of these issues.

What's Contradictory

1. "From its easternmost point near Watertown, New York,[2]" Several wiki pages use this phrasing, but all maps show the eastern end of the escarpment near Rochester which is about 150 miles west of Watertown. I have not yet been able to track down good geological maps to see which is correct. Nevertheless, the graphics and the text are contradictory. The citation [2] is unrecoverable. 2. "The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment or cuesta running through southern and central Ontario, Canada and western New York State. It is composed of the Lockport geological formation of Silurian age, and is similar to the Onondaga geological formation, which runs parallel to it and just to the south, in New York and eastern Ontario."

The first paragraph gives the more popular idea of where the Niagara Escarpment is.

"The Niagara Escarpment is the most prominent of several escarpments formed in the bedrock of southern Ontario. It is traceable starting in eastern New York and along a westerly direction across the Niagara River into Ontario where it stretches along the Niagara Peninsula and northerly to Georgian Bay near Collingwood. It then turns westerly toward Owen Sound at which point it turns northerly to form the spine of the Bruce Peninsula, the Manitoulin and other islands located in northern Lake Huron where it turns westerly into the Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan. It then extends southward from the area of Sault Ste. Marie into Wisconsin following the Door Peninsula and western coast of Lake Michigan, ending near Chicago."

This paragraph gives more locations. Some are more specific to the first paragraph, but others are new.

The brown area of this image implies the Niagara Escarpment exists in even more locations.

And that's what self-contradictory about this article. Perhaps when I'm climbing down the Niagara Escarpment to Lake Michigan at my parent's cottage in Door County, I'll take a picture and upload it. -Acjelen 21:07, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm not "confused" about anything. -Acjelen 21:14, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So why don't you add the information to trace it farther west? I'm familiar with the section from eastern NY into the Niagara Penninsula of Ontario. An editor familiar with the section in Ontario added info and photos on that section. If each editor adds the part that (s)he is familiar with, we'll eventually get the whole of it. Go for it! Pollinator 03:10, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

My main concern is that the first and the second paragraphs should agree. I have attempted that. If we are to expand this article, it may need a "Location" section division to keep the introductory paragraph introductory. It would also be nice if the formation of limestone was a little more explicit. -Acjelen 12:13, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As to the map, a possible solution is about to appear. I have created a map of the Great Lakes region with the escarpment plotted on it. The old map is not merely "contradictory", but just plain wrong. What it shows is not the Escarpment, but the extent of Silurian rocks associated with the Niagara Escarpment formation. I have marked, in red, places where there is an actual escarpment or ridge. This information has been compiled from several websites. Kelisi 17:17, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If the current map in the article is correct, then the text should be edited to omit any mention of the escarpment reaching into Illinois or "northwest of Chicago." According to that map, it clearly ends well within Wisconsin. --mtz206 03:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple geography of categories

Aren't Category:Geography of Hamilton, Ontario and Category:Geography of Niagara Region, Ontario both subcategories of Category:Geography of North America? We should not cherry-pick which local geography categories are used with this article. -Acjelen 14:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Niagara Escarpment Categorized As A "Mountain"?

If I'm grasping the definition of "mountain" correctly in this context, I think that labeling the Niagara Escarpment as such in a categorical sense in the encyclopedia is kind of dubious and should be removed. Comments? cheers Deconstructhis (talk) 19:31, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Niagara Escarpment is not really a "mountain" but here in Hamilton, Ontario the escarpment cuts right through the center of our city splitting it up in two. We have the lower city Hamilton by the lake (Lake Ontario) and then we have the upper city Hamilton atop of the Niagara Escarpment. Even though the escarpment is not really a mountain the locals here in town refer to the upper city as "the mountain." Nhl4hamilton | Chit-Chat 17:49, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with Deconstructhis, I think it should be removed from that category. It's too much of a stretch. I've actually been to Hamilton and visited the famous castle. Near Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, locals call it "The Ledge", and I wouldn't add it to a ledge category. Royal broil 04:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I grew up in Flamborough (on top of the escarpment) we took "the hill" any time we went into Dundas.70.79.93.22 (talk) 04:33, 15 August 2015 (UTC)31jetjet[reply]

Still Contradictory

As of today, the text of the introductory section has been improved relative to the matters described above. However, the figure to its right showing the escarpment in red does not agree. The text describes the east end as near Watertown, NY and the west end northwest of Chicago near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. The map, however, shows its east end being just west of Rochester, NY (the text describes it running through Rochester) and its west end northwest of Milwaukee, decidedly not near the state line.

Also, this article states that Niagra Falls is the location that the river goes over the escarpment, and the article on Queenston Heights states that it is "a feature of the escarpment"; Quenston Heights is more than 10 kilometers up river from the falls; is the escarpment really that wide?Joe Avins (talk) 18:06, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what the (only) cited paper by Luczaj actually says: "In Wisconsin, the escarpment runs... south to Ashippun in Dodge County". Ashippun is 50 miles north of the Illinois border, 125 miles NW by N of Chicago, and almost 40 miles NW of downtown Milwaukee (why use Chicago, farther away in another state?). I think we can easily paraphrase the cited paper as to location of the southwestern end, and omit the relativity of the border and Chicago - they're a bit obtuse. The Niagara Cuesta, which is a broader and objectively more correct term (in simple terms, escarpment is the steep side of a cuesta... geologists, try to contain yourselves), DOES run into Illinois, and far beyond. We probably need to elaborate this somewhere. The steep side in Illinois has been worn down and filled in. When is an escarpment no longer an escarpment? Another issue: it says the escarpment runs "primarily east-west". No, it doesn't - take an east-west straightedge and try to line up the escarpment on it. It's closer to say it's roughly a semicircle, running around the top of the Great Lakes Basin. Another paper described it as "sickle shaped" - pretty darn good. Look at it - what's it look like if it weren't embedded in a map? If your pencil isn't broken fix the thing. Be bold. Sbalfour (talk) 19:20, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Take note of this though: ^[1]. It says "The Niagara escarpment [runs] east of the Horicon Marsh to terminate in northern Illinois...". We can cite that, though now there's a conflict in sources. See this^[2], showing clearly the difference in extent of the cuesta (Fig. 4) and escarpment (Fig. 5), which does not extend to the Illinois border. But it muddies the water a little in Fig. 1, where the ridgeline extends to the border. The Wisconsin DNR^[3] says the escarpment extends thru 7 counties: Brown, Calumet, Dodge, Door, Fond du Lac, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc. The southern-most of those is Dodge, confirming the Luczaj location. Clearly, the wiki text does not follow the paper cited. Luczaj is the generally cited authority for this. We're at liberty to cite all of these, but that's belaboring the point. Sbalfour (talk) 19:20, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the lead to conform to the sources we have and avoid oblique references to distant points like Chicago and the Illinois border. I only worry that Dodge County won't be familiar to anyone but locals, but the nearest focal point of Milwaukee is 40 long miles away. Sbalfour (talk) 01:11, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

Lake Ontario formed how?

The last paragraph under formation says that Lakes Superior and Ontario were formed by a volcanic rift system. Nope - Ontario was formed by fluvio-glaciation. The citation explicitly says that the eastern/southern limit of the rift system was southeastern Michigan, so that excludes Erie and Ontario. Further, I seriously doubt that canyons in Lake Ontario would be lined with basalt. Citation needed, yes sir.

This article probably isn't the place to elaborate on the geology of Superior and Ontario because they weren't part of the Silurian inland sea, so they didn't contribute (much) to the formation of the escarpment. Sbalfour (talk) 05:05, 11 June 2023 (UTC) Sbalfour (talk) 05:05, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] ttps://doorcountycoastalbyway.org/niagara-escarpment/

[2] ttps://wgnhs.wisc.edu/pubshare/GS22-intro.pdf

[3] ttps://dnr.wi.gov/files/PDF/pubs/er/ER0801.pdf

[1]

[2]

[3]