Cayuga Lake’s natural beauty is captivating, from its southern headwaters, which form some of the region’s most spectacular gorges and waterfalls, to its northern outlet at the beautiful Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. Cayuga Lake’s watershed is the total area of land that drains into the lake and is the largest of the Finger Lakes, covering 850 square miles of agricultural, residential, industrial, forests, and wetlands.
Although the dominant surface water feature of the basin is the lake itself, a network of streams flow into the lake. The northern outlet of the lake receives about 48 percent of the total runoff from the Oswego River Basin’s 5,100 square miles, before it flows into the Seneca River, towards the Oswego River and Lake Ontario. The land area of the Cayuga Lake watershed includes 7 counties and 50 municipalities (cities, towns, and villages), and is home to over 120,000 people.
Let’s add a link to the maps and also to the Cayuga Lake Watershed Characterization which are under the “Resources” button. Let’s link to those map/data resources here.
