Explore Lake Baikal

With a fifth of the Earth’s thawed fresh water, Lake Baikal is different from other deep lakes because it contains oxygen dissolved at the bottom of the lake. Most of the more than 2500 plant and animal species in Lake Baikal are found nowhere else in the world. Scientists believe that up to 40 percent of the species of the lake have not yet been described. The endemic species of Lake Baikal have evolved over tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years.

The lake is estimated to be more than 20 million years old and due to its depth it would take 400 years for all the water in Baikal to flow through its only outlet, the Angara River. Lake Baikal is home to about 3,000 species of plants and animals, almost half of which are endemic, including the Baikal or Nerpa seal, the only freshwater seal exclusively on Earth. Located deep in the Russian subcontinent, Baikal is the deepest, oldest and most extensive of all lakes, a superstar of superlatives in hydrology, geology, ecology and history. The lake is more than 5,300 feet deep at the deepest point, which is about 4,000 feet below sea level. With 12,248 square miles of surface, Baikal averages 2,442 feet deep: its moon-shaped moon-shaped figure is a huge crack valley that first appeared about 25 million years ago due to the divergence of the Earth’s crust.

On the surface surpassed the very shallow Great Upper Lake, Huron and Michigan in North America, as well as the relatively shallow Lake Victoria in East Africa. Known as the “Galapagos of Russia”, its age and isolation have produced some of the world’s richest and most unusual freshwater fauna of exceptional value to evolutionary science. It is also the world’s oldest and lightest freshwater lake, estimated to be about 25 million years old.

Today, Lake Baikal contains about 20 percent of the water of the lake and the river of the earth, making this Russian giant comparable in volume to the entire Amazon basin. Baikal is so large that it is said to take an average of 330 years for a single water molecule to flow through it, from inlet to outlet. Lake Baikal has 27 islands, including a 45-mile one called Olkhon, while more than 1,500 animal species live in and around Baikal, about 80 percent of which live elsewhere on the planet.

78.8 km wide and 395 miles long, it is the largest freshwater lake in the world. And with a history that is 25 million years old, it is also the oldest on Earth. But size and age are not the only things that make this more special. Ugly, perhaps, among the pollution off the coast of Baikal is a paper mill that has discharged pollutants into Baikal for years before it was closed in 2008 for ecological protection reasons. But the mill reopened in 2010 and reportedly would use cleaner and safer practices than before.

Located in Siberia, Laka Baikal is a natural wonder on Earth. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world, with about 20 percent of all Earth’s surface water, and the oldest lake motor yacht dubai (https://charterclick.com/dubai/motor_yacht) in the world is at least 25 million years old. Climatic variations, including those due to the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide, are more pronounced at higher latitudes.

The Baikal Mountains on the north coast and the taiga are protected as a national park. It has 27 islands; the largest, Olkhon, is 72 km long and is the third largest island in the world with lakes. Located in southeastern Siberia, Lake Baikal of 3.15 million hectares is the oldest and deepest lake in the world. It contains 20% of the world’s non-frozen freshwater reserve. Known as the ‘Galapagos of Russia’, their age and isolation have produced one of the richest and most unusual freshwater fauna in the world, which has exceptional value for evolutionary science.

Although it contains a record of ice age from the surrounding mountains in its sediments, it is unique among large lakes of great latitude because the sediments have not been traversed by continental ice sheets. The Committee has registered Lake Baikal as the most prominent example of a freshwater ecosystem based on natural criteria, and . It is the oldest and deepest lake in the world that contains nearly 20% of the world’s thawed freshwater reserve. The lake contains an exceptional variety of endemic flora and fauna, which has an exceptional value for evolutionary science. It is also surrounded by a system of protected areas with high landscape values and other natural values.

When autumn starts, the surface temperature drops again and a second homothermal period of about 4 ° C (39 ° F) takes place from above around 300 m in October-November. In the deepest parts of the lake, from about 300 m, the temperature is stable at 3.1-3.4 ° C (37.6-38.1 ° F) with only small annual variations. Exceptionally between these lakes, their sediments show no evidence that these ice sheets cover them. In contrast, deep sediments show how the climate has varied in nearly 7 million years of recent history. The unusual crystalline solids known as gas hydrates are found in Lake Baikal, making it the only private freshwater lake in the world it owns.

Deep drilling on Lake Baikal remains technologically challenging; therefore, the deepest shell deposits are unlikely to be sampled quickly. Unfortunately, climate change threatens this incredible place. According to Marianne V. Moore and her colleagues in Bioscience, the Baikal food web base, endemic small algae called diatoms, are extremely dependent on the duration of the ice sheet. In Lake Baikal, the annual flowering of spring algae that provides oxygen and food to the lake via photosynthesis takes place under the ice. This necessary event would be seriously affected by changes in the ice sheet, which could affect the entire ecosystem of the lake.


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