Talk:Niagara Escarpment

message: Is there consensus that we can create a wikicategory for Niagara Escarpment?  There are so many related articles about parks and trails, etc. Blacknail 20:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The escarpment affects quite a few states/provinces. How far should the category go? Should it include the counties? What about Lake Winnebago, which was formed because of the escarpment? Royalbroil T : C 03:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Multiple geography of categories 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Niagara Escarpment Categorized As A "Mountain"? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Take note of this though: https://doorcountycoastalbyway.org/niagara-escarpment/. 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 thishttps://wgnhs.wisc.edu/pubshare/GS22-intro.pdf, 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 DNRhttps://dnr.wi.gov/files/PDF/pubs/er/ER0801.pdf 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Still Contradictory 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Lake Ontario formed how?