great lakes?

Question

why dont the great lakes of michigan have salt in it since it flows into the hudson river and it has salt in it (hudson river) and the salt doesnt come to us in the great lakes rivers

Answer 1

The flow is FROM the freshwater Great Lakes INTO the Hudson, so the salt is not able to flow upstream into the lakes.

Answer 2

The oceans are salty because just about all water on land eventually ends up in the ocean, the oceans evaporate water leaving the salt trapped behind in the oceans. This process to make the oceans salty has taken billions of year, the great lakes in comparison are much younger, and even then the water from the lakes eventually makes it to the ocean via rivers.

The Hudson is Salty in parts because it's a tidal estuary, meaning the riverbed is below sea level. So during a high tide the water from the ocean flows up river, and mixes with the fresh water. You could consider the end to the river as the point where the riverbed reaches sea level. At that point is mixes with the sea water, and becomes an estuary. When the tide come up it pulls water against the current and mixes sea water with the fresh. The estuary does not extend up to the great lakes, and I believe it ends before Albany somewhere. Before the estuary the river is higher then sea level, and though the tide will come up river to whatever sea level is, it can't be pulled up higher then sea level.

~D

Answer 3

Are you ready for this? Almost all rivers eventually flow to a body of salt water. However there are a few rivers like the Rio Grande that dry up before reaching the ocean.

Back to the Great Lakes, the flow of water as you correctly pointed out is West to East. So the Lakes flow into the Hudson River, via Niagara falls. However, this is not the reason that the Lakes are not salty.

Yes, you are correct in reporting that the Hudson has salt in it, but as you get farther away from the ocean the saltiness decreases. remember a river is a flowing body of water, pushing towards the ocean, as the tides pushes salt water up the river during high tide. Eventually when the tide goes out, the fresh water flushes out the system. There is always an area of where the salt water and the fresh water meet.

The Amazon river contains such a massive flow of water that the fresh water pushes out into the ocean for hundreds of miles. But eventually as it the flow of water slows the salt and fresh waters mix. the Hudson river just doesn't have that kind of volume of water so the mixing takes place in the river itself.

Answer 4

Wow, where did you learn geography. The great lakes get to the ocean through the St Lawrence river and only the mouth of the Hudson is salty because of seepage in from the ocean.