A sediment budget for southern Lake Michigan: source and sink models for different time intervals

Two terms dominate the modern sediment-budget equation: (1) bluff erosion, which is an order of magnitude larger than either rivers or aerosols as a source, and (2) deposition in the deep basin, which is more than two orders of magnitude greater as a sink than suspended sediment transport out of the basin. The attempt to reconstruct sediment budgets for time intervals of 100, 5000, and 10 000 years leads to important insights about erosion and sedimentation processes. Bluff erosion is the dominant source of both sand and mud in the basin. The deep lake floor is the primary sink for mud, whereas both the deep lake and nearshore areas are important sinks for sand. -from Authors