Relations between lake morphometry and the presence of laminated lake sediments: A re-examination of Larsen and MacDonald (1993)

In this paper we conduct an empirical test of a published equation which relates lake surface area and maximum lake depth to the presence or absence of laminated lake sediments. A 297 lake dataset from New York State and six regions in Canada, representing a number of biogeoclimatic zones, is employed. The results suggest that deeper lakes are more likely to contain laminated lake sediments than are shallower lakes. The percentage of lakes incorrectly predicted to contain laminated sediments (false positives) and that incorrectly predicted to contain massive sediments (false negatives), was much higher than that found in the study in which the original equation was developed. Its low predictive ability suggests, therefore, that in addition to lake morphometry, many other factors affect the formation and preservation of laminated sediments.