RE-MAPPING LATE PLEISTOCENE SHORELINES IN THE LAKE ERIE BASIN USING LIDAR

The Great Lake basins hosted various pro-glacial lake phases tied to shifting Laurentide Ice Sheet configurations during the last deglaciation. Previous lakes in the Erie basin had shorelines at different elevations due to the configuration of the ice-sheet dam and the elevation of available spillways. Evidence of these shorelines, primarily from glacial lakes Whittlesey and Warren, remains in the form of beach ridges and wave cut features. Shorelines have not been mapped since Fairchild (1907) and Caulkin (1969) but are revealed in recent 1 m LIDAR shaded relief maps in detail. We map the shorelines using georeferenced historic maps in QGIS. Analysis compiles both 10 m DEM data and 1 m LIDAR data of the Western New York area from the Pennsylvania state line in the south to Genesee County in the north. Vector layers are created atop the raster layers by tracing the shoreline features. Finally, following our mapping, we will create an elevation profile of the vector layers to assess the increase in elevation with latitude due to uplifting of the isostatic depression from glacial retreat.