The largest lake in the world

In order to answer the question of which is the largest lake in the world, one must clearly understand what a lake is. This concept includes internal reservoirs located on any of the continents, which lack current and connection with the World Ocean.

Seas and marine depressions, as a rule, were formed when tectonic shifts of the earth's crust took place. This is how the largest lake in the world appeared - the Caspian or the Caspian Sea. Why the sea? Separating from the world's oceans during the movement of layers of the earth's crust, the Caspian became drainless, but the water retained its salinity while the bottom is covered with the oceanic type of the earth's crust. By the way, salinity reaches 13%. As for the area and depth, the largest lake in the world - the Caspian - has an open water surface (mirror) equal to three hundred and seventy-one thousand square kilometers and a maximum depth of one thousand twenty-five meters.

The lake is located on the Eurasian continent. The coastline is six thousand seven hundred kilometers long. In the eastern part there are about fifty islands. The Caspian Sea feeds one hundred and thirty rivers. The largest waterways that flow into the largest lake in the world are the following: the Volga, the Terek and the Urals. And the largest city on the Caspian coast is Baku. Sturgeon, carp, pike perch - this is only a small fraction of the species diversity, and in general more than a hundred species of fish live in the waters of the Caspian Sea.

However, the Caspian is the largest saline, but Baikal is the largest lake with fresh water in Russia. In addition, it is also the deepest lake in the world. The total area of the mirror is 31,722 square kilometers, and the depth exceeds fifteen hundred meters. The largest lake in Russia affects the volume of lake water, which exceeds twenty-three thousand five hundred cubic kilometers. This is the largest natural reservoir. The waters of Lake Baikal fill the natural basin, surrounded by mountains. Their distinctive feature is practically completely absent organic impurities and mineral substances, and even in winter the water is so transparent that the bottom is visible even at a depth of thirty to forty meters. The fauna and flora of Lake Baikal is amazing: two thousand seven hundred species, among which almost three dozen fish, found only here and nowhere else.

In fact, large and simply huge lakes are found on almost every continent. North America, for example, is famous for its lakes Michigan and Huron, whose total area of mirrors is almost 120 thousand square kilometers. And the area of Lake Superior, located in the same place, in North America, exceeds eighty two thousand square kilometers. The origin of this reservoir is associated with the melting of glaciers. It is the largest, the deepest and the coldest. In East Africa, there is its largest lake - Victoria - with an open surface area of almost 69 thousand square kilometers, but its depth is low. A huge amount of rainfall is the main source that replenishes Victoria's water. Of freshwater lakes, it is the second largest and second only to the Upper.

Returning territorially to Russia, one can not help remembering another lake, which was once the fourth in the world, and today is on the verge of extinction - Aral. The process of shallowing is very fast. The two main water arteries, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, carry their waters to the Aral Sea, but for more than half a century people have been actively taking and using river water in agriculture for irrigation. Scientists have been fighting for many years over the problem of preserving the Aral Sea, but so far it has been inconclusive. Unfortunately, the lake, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, unfortunately, fails.