In central Quebec, Canada, there’s a ring-shaped lake known as the ‘Eye of Quebec’. At 1,942 km2, this lake, and the island that lies at its centre, is larger than Greater London and can clearly be seen from space!
How did the ‘Eye of Quebec’ form?
This almost perfectly circular structure is thought to have been formed by an asteroid impact that occurred approximately 214 million years ago, during the Late Triassic. Based on the size of the lake - which actually sits in the crater created by said impact - scientists estimate the asteroid in question measured roughly 5km across.
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While the original crater rim has been heavily eroded by glaciers, shrinking from 100km to 72km across, the impact’s central uplift - a 952m-high peak known as Mount Babel - remains at the centre.
The impact was so powerful that an ejecta blanket of shocked quartz has been found in similarly dated rocks layers as far away as England and Japan!
It has been suggested the so-called ‘Manicouagan impact’ may be linked to an extinction event, though radiometric dating has ruled it out as the cause of the infamous Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction - an event that wiped out nearly 70% of all species.
Instead, the timing of the impact coincided with a smaller, more localised extinction that killed off many North American lizard-like archosaurs and non-mammalian therapsids.
What lives in the ‘Eye of Quebec’ today?
The island that lies at the centre of the ‘Eye of Quebec’ is known as René-Levasseur Island and is the world’s second-largest lake island, after Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron.
It contains an IUCN-protected ecological reserve that protects a pristine boreal and alpine ecosystem, home to woodland caribou, black bears, and moose. This ecological reserve, known as the Louis-Babel Ecological Reserve, was established in 1991 and covers a tenth of René-Levasseur Island.
The deep waters of the surrounding Manicouagan Reservoir also support many different species of fish, including lake trout, speckled trout, northern pike, and landlocked Atlantic salmon.
This reservoir is the result of a dam-building project that began in the 1960s, joining two crescent-shaped lakes that once lay separate on either side of the impact crater. Today, it helps sustain the region’s vast wetlands, which provide habitat for more than 200 bird species, including short-eared owls, golden eagles, and peregrine falcons.
Could the ‘Eye of Quebec’ become a national park?
In the early 2000s, René-Levasseur Island became the focus of a legal dispute between the Pessamit Innu First Nation and the logging company Kruger Inc. The Innu claimed ancestral ownership of the land and fought to stop logging, which was destroying large areas of intact forest and vital caribou habitat.
Known as Atik in the Innu language, caribou are sacred to the Innu people and symbolise their deep cultural and historical connection to not only René-Levasseur Island, but much of the boreal forest of eastern Québec.
René-Levasseur Island lies at the northern limit of commercial logging in Québec and is still the site of ongoing operations, despite opposition from the Innu and other environmental advocacy groups.
Since 2005, one of these groups, SOS Levasseur, has led research expeditions across the island to identify remaining old-growth forests. Their goal is to secure permanent protection for the island, either as a protected area or a national park - though they’re not quite there yet.
