Portal:Lakes
The Lakes Portal
A portal dedicated to Lakes
Introduction
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A lake is an often naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although they may be connected with the ocean by rivers, such as Lake Ontario. Most lakes are freshwater and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume.
Lakes are typically larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars at coastal regions of oceans or large lakes. Most lakes are fed by springs, and both fed and drained by creeks and rivers, but some lakes are endorheic without any outflow, while volcanic lakes are filled directly by precipitation runoffs and do not have any inflow streams.
Natural lakes are generally found in mountainous areas (i.e. alpine lakes), dormant volcanic craters, rift zones and areas with ongoing glaciation. Other lakes are found in depressed landforms or along the courses of mature rivers, where a river channel has widened over a basin formed by eroded floodplains and wetlands. Some parts of the world have many lakes formed by the chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last ice age. All lakes are temporary over long periods of time, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them. (Full article...)
Selected article -
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On 21 August 1986, a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.
The eruption triggered the sudden release of about 100,000–300,000 tons (1.6 million tons, according to some sources[who?]) of carbon dioxide (CO2). The gas cloud initially rose at nearly 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph; 28 m/s) and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, suffocating people and livestock within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake.
A degassing system has since been installed at the lake, with the aim of reducing the concentration of CO2 in the waters and therefore the risk of further eruptions. Along with the Lake Monoun disaster two years earlier, it is one of only two recorded limnic eruptions in history. (Full article...)General topics
Lake zones |
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Lake stratification |
Lake types |
See also |
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General images -
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Nowitna River in Alaska. Two oxbow lakes – a short one at the bottom of the picture and a longer, more curved one at the middle-right. (from Lake)The
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Ephemeral 'Lake Badwater', a lake only noted after heavy winter and spring rainfall, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, 9 February 2005. Landsat 5 satellite photo (from Lake)
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Lake)Cross sectional diagram of limnological lake zones (left) and algal community types (right) (from
- Lakes can have significant cultural importance. The
- Round Tangle Lake, one of the
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Crater Lake in Oregon, USA (from Volcanogenic lake)
- Five Flower Lake in
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Soda Lakes in Nevada, USA (from Volcanogenic lake)
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ice core drilling above subglacial Lake Vostok. These drilling efforts collected re-frozen lake water that has been analyzed to understand the lake's chemistry. Image credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller / US National Science Foundation (from Subglacial lake)An illustration of
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Antarctic Ice Sheet. Image credit: Zina Deretsky / US National Science Foundation (from Subglacial lake)An artist's depiction of the subglacial lakes and rivers beneath the
- The first view of the sediment at the bottom of subglacial Lake Whillans, captured by the WISSARD expedition. Image credit:
- The crater lake of
- Satellite image of subglacial
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Peter Kropotkin first proposed the idea of fresh water under Antarctic ice. (from Subglacial lake)Russian scientist
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Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Volcanogenic lake)Lava lake at
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Taylor Glacier and its outflow, Blood Falls. Image credit: Zina Deretsky / US National Science Foundation (from Subglacial lake)A schematic cross-section of the subglacial pool beneath
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Lake Balaton in Hungary (from Lake)Ice melting on
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Garibaldi Lake in British Columbia, Canada, is impounded by lava flows comprising The Barrier (from Volcanogenic lake)
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Lake Mapourika, New Zealand (from Lake)
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Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia which is the largest volcanic lake in the world (from Volcanogenic lake)View of
- A view of the southern polar plain of Mars. The area where a subglacial lake has been detected is highlighted. Image credit: USGS Astrogeology Science Center, Arizona State University (from
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Titan's north polar hydrocarbon seas and lakes, as seen in a false-color Cassini synthetic aperture radar mosaic (from Lake)
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External media
![External media](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Icon_External_Link.svg/37px-Icon_External_Link.svg.png)
- World Lake Database. International Lake Environment Committee Foundation. – provides a searchable database
- Global Lakes and Wetlands Database. World Wide Fund for Nature. – available for free download