When was lake baikal formed

The pearl of Siberia. Located in south-central Siberia, not far from the Mongolian border and surrounded by mountains, forests and wild rivers, Baikal is an immense and breathtaking area of natural beauty. Although it's not the biggest lake in the world in size - that distinction goes to the salty Caspian Sea - it is the largest by volume.

Where is Lake Baikal? Lake Baikal is highlighted in green below. Protecting the lake's natural treasures. Lake Baikal is home to more than 2, species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world, including the Baikal omul fish and Baikal oil fish as well as the nerpa , one of the world's only freshwater species of seal.

Lake Baikal, shown here, is a lake between two high-elevation regions in Siberia, Russia. This is Of that water, almost all of it is in the oceans, with just 2. Most of Earth's fresh water is in glaciers, ice caps, and permafrost, and water and ice beneath the surface. Most of the rest, as you might expect, is in the large reservoirs of liquid water on our land masses: Earth's lakes.

All told, fresh water lakes make up just 0. Most of Earth's lakes are relatively young, less than 18, years old and formed during the end of the last ice age. Only 20 lakes, worldwide, are ancient: more than 1 million years old. But Lake Baikal is not only Earth's oldest lake, at million years of age, but it's also the largest. Here's the fascinating science behind it. The overwhelming majority of Earth's water is salinated, and the majority of our fresh water is Earth's lakes are the primary location where liquid, surface fresh water is held, but most of them were formed by the retreat of glaciers.

The majority of Earth's fresh water is frozen, in the forms of glaciers and ice caps, and this becomes much more severe during ice ages: where the polar caps grow large and extend down to much more equatorial latitudes than their present locations. For example, the entirety of the Great Lakes, the most prominent fresh water features in North America, are all a result of the drainage of the St. Lawrence River.

Note the yellow highlighted regions are the interglacial periods, with the larger 'ice ages' between them. Earth experiences ice ages relatively frequently, with interglacial periods separating them on timescales a little greater than every , years. If a lake was created from these processes, it very likely won't last very long.

The majority of lakes, over long timescales, will wind up filling with sediments deposited from inflowing rivers. But there are some very prominent exceptions. Rather than living thousands of years and having maximum depths of only a few hundred meters up to 1, feet , there are a few lakes found throughout the world that are ancient and super deep: millions of years old and over a mile 1, m deep. Nowhere else in the world can we go to study so long a record of such an important, but little known, part of the global climate system.

Steve Colman, U. Geological Survey The special environmental and geological settings of Lake Baikal provide unparalleled opportunities for research and for international cooperation. Map showing location of Lake Baikal and associated rift basins. In a recent Joint Statement, they affirm the need to conserve the environment of Lake Baikal and to use its potential for research in limnology, geology, and global climate change.

The U. National Science Foundation. Continental rifts, like the Lake Baikal rift, and their end products, such as passive continental margins like the east coast of the United States, are ubiquitous in the Earth's geologic record.

They contain information from which a significant amount of the Earth's history has been interpreted. Due to their high sedimentation rates, large rift lakes like Lake Baikal have great potential for providing high-resolution information about both tectonic and climatic change.

Surface area : 12, square miles 31, square km , according to Smithsonian magazine. This area puts it in seventh place worldwide in terms of surface area, according to Geology. Length : miles km , according to Lake Baikal. Maximum width : 49 miles Lake Baikal is located in south-central Russia near the Mongolian border. The largest nearby city is Irkutsk. Lake Baikal has historically played a large role in the Russian imagination. It represents the unspoiled beauty of Russia and is sometimes referred to as the Sacred Sea.

Lake Baikal plays a central part in many local creation myths and appears throughout Russian folklore, according to Baikal Nature. Lake Baikal attracts more than , tourists a year, according to the Siberian Times.

Though it is in southern Siberia, the lands around Lake Baikal are generally warmer than the rest of the area because large bodies of water have a moderating force, according to LakeBaikal. There are 27 mostly uninhabited islands in Lake Baikal, according to Lake Baikal. The largest is mile-long 72 km Olkhon, on which there are villages.

About 1, people live there. More than streams and rivers feed into Lake Baikal, but the Angara River is the only outlet. It carries out about 60 cubic km Eventually the water makes its way to the Arctic Ocean. The Selenga River is the largest source of water coming into Lake Baikal. Flowing north from Mongolia, it contributes nearly 50 percent of the lake's water. Like Lake Baikal, the Selenga Delta is internationally recognized for its biodiversity and importance, according to the Ramsar Convention.

Lake Baikal is the only very deep lake to have oxygenated water at its lowest depths, like the ocean, according to a article in BioScience. Additionally, the earth under Lake Baikal is heated.