70 Fun Facts About Lake

Which body of water is the world's largest lake, though it is usually called a sea?

It is bordered by five countries and is famous for caviar and oil, and its shores are below sea level.

Which body of water is the deepest in the world, plunging more than a mile down?

Its sheer depth means it holds 22-23% of the world's fresh surface water, more than all the North American Great Lakes together.

The world's deepest lake, in Siberia, is also its oldest. Roughly how old is it?

Most lakes are geologically young; this one sits in an active rift and just keeps getting deeper.

What is the freshwater seal species found only in Lake Baikal called?

Its main prey is the golomyanka, a translucent oily fish that makes up the lake's biggest fish biomass.

Often called the highest navigable lake in the world, Titicaca sits on the border of which two countries?

Its surface is 3,812 metres above sea level, and the Uros people live on islands they build from cut totora reeds.

The Uros people of Lake Titicaca build their floating islands out of what?

The buoyant sedge grows thickly in the shallows and is layered and constantly topped up as the bottom rots away.

Which lake is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?

By volume it is only third, behind Baikal and Tanganyika, which are far deeper.

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a November 1975 storm on which of the Great Lakes?

Gordon Lightfoot's song calls the lake 'Gitche Gumee', borrowing the name from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha.

Together, the five North American Great Lakes hold roughly what share of the world's surface fresh water?

Hydrologically, Michigan and Huron are a single body of water joined at the Straits of Mackinac.

Which is the only one of the Great Lakes located entirely within the United States?

Chicago, Milwaukee, Gary and Green Bay all sit on its shores.

Which of the Great Lakes is the shallowest and smallest by volume, and therefore also the warmest?

Its warmth nearly became a problem in 1999 for two nuclear plants that rely on cool lake water.

Lake Victoria shares its water among Tanzania, Uganda and which other country?

John Hanning Speke reached its southern shore in 1858 and renamed it after Queen Victoria; the invasive Nile perch has since wiped out many native species.

Which African lake is the world's longest freshwater lake?

David Livingstone visited it repeatedly on his last expedition while hunting for the source of the Nile.

Which lake is home to more species of fish than any other, including at least 700 species of cichlids?

Livingstone reached it in 1859 and named it Lake Nyasa, a name Tanzania still uses.

Loch Ness contains more water than all the lakes of which two countries combined?

It is only Scotland's second-largest loch by area, but its great depth makes it the largest by volume in the British Isles.

Which loch is the largest lake in Great Britain by surface area?

Within the whole UK it is beaten only by Lough Neagh and Lough Erne in Northern Ireland.

Windermere, the largest body of water in England, lies in which national park?

It is a ribbon lake, and Bowness is the only town that actually touches its shore.

Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey are collectively known by what name?

Thomas De Quincey and Charles Lamb moved in the same circle in England's Lake District.

Crater Lake fills a caldera left by the collapse of which volcano?

The collapse happened about 7,700 years ago, and Wizard Island is a cinder cone that grew afterwards.

How deep is Crater Lake, making it the deepest in the United States?

That is 1,949 feet, and the water is famous for its intense blue colour and clarity.

The shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest land on Earth, at roughly how far below sea level?

Its water is about 9.6 times saltier than the ocean, dense enough that swimming feels like floating.

The Dead Sea, with salinity around 34%, is roughly how much saltier than the ocean?

Nothing much can live in it, which is how it got its name; its density is 1.24 kg per litre.

The big salt lake beside Salt Lake City, Utah, is the remnant of which vast prehistoric lake?

The old lakebed left behind the Bonneville Salt Flats, and the modern lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.

Robert Smithson's 1970 land artwork Spiral Jetty coils into which body of water in the American West?

It is only visible when the water drops below about 4,198 feet above sea level, so it spent years submerged.

Lake Como's distinctive shape, carved by the ancient Adda glacier, resembles which letter?

At over 400 metres deep it is one of Europe's deepest lakes, though only Italy's third-largest after Garda and Maggiore.

A holiday of ghost-story writing beside which lake produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Locals call it Le Léman; it is the largest lake on the course of the Rhône.

Lake Constance, known in German as the Bodensee, sits where which three countries meet?

The Rhine flows in at one end and out at the other, so it is really three connected bodies of water.

Why did the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest lake, shrink to a tenth of its size by 2007?

The cotton fields it fed left behind a new desert, the Aralkum, and the lake split into four separate pieces.

A shrinking Sahel lake borders Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and which fourth country that shares its name?

Its open water fell from 25,000 square km in 1960 to about 2,000 by 1980 through drought and diversion.

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US by capacity, was created by which dam?

It lies on the Colorado River about 24 miles east of Las Vegas, straddling Nevada and Arizona.

Which Zambezi reservoir on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border is the largest artificial lake by volume?

It filled between 1958 and 1963 behind the Kariba Dam, drowning the Kariba Gorge.

The world's largest reservoir by surface area lies entirely within which African country?

Lake Volta stretches from the Akosombo Dam in the south to the north of the country and covers 8,502 square km.

A U-shaped pool left behind when a river meander is cut off is called what?

Australians call the same feature a billabong.

A kettle lake forms in a hollow left by what?

Retreating glaciers dropped chunks of dead ice that were buried by sediment and slowly melted into pits.

Lake Vostok, the largest of Antarctica's subglacial lakes, lies beneath roughly how much ice?

Antarctica has 675 known lakes under its ice, and this one sits at the coldest place on the planet.

In 1986 a sudden cloud of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon killed roughly how many people?

Magma beneath the lake leaks CO2 into the water; only two other lakes on Earth are known to be capable of such 'limnic eruptions'.

Lake Kivu on the Congo-Rwanda border shares which rare and dangerous trait with Lake Nyos?

Dissolved gases build up in its deep layers, and only three lakes in the world are known to erupt this way.

Lake Hillier off Western Australia is famous for being what colour?

It sits on Middle Island in the Recherche Archipelago and keeps its colour even when the water is bottled.

Lake Retba near Dakar in Senegal is nicknamed Lac Rose because algae turn it what colour?

Its salt content reaches 40% in places, and workers harvest salt from the shallows.

Turkana in Kenya is the world's largest body of water of which kind?

It is also the world's largest alkaline lake and is sometimes called the Jade Sea for its colour.

Lake Assal in Djibouti, over 500 feet below sea level, is the lowest point on land in which continent?

Its water is ten times saltier than the sea, and no river flows out of it.

Lake Toba in Indonesia is the world's largest lake of which type?

It fills the caldera of the Toba supervolcano and is Indonesia's largest lake.

Which lake in northwestern Russia is the largest lake located entirely in Europe?

It lies near Saint Petersburg and is the second-largest lake in Russia after Baikal.

Which lake is the largest in Central Europe and Hungary's top tourist destination?

Hungarians sometimes call it the 'Hungarian Sea' since the country is landlocked.

Lake Bled, with its tiny church-topped island, is in which country?

It sits in the Julian Alps and reaches only 29.5 metres deep.

Croatia's Plitvice Lakes, a UNESCO site since 1979, are formed by a chain of waters over which rock?

It is one of the oldest and largest national parks in the country.

What is the near-nightly thunderstorm phenomenon around Venezuela's Maracaibo called?

It is named after the biggest river feeding the lake, and the near-nightly flashes have long guided sailors.

Lake Placid in New York hosted the Winter Olympics in 1980 and which earlier year?

The 1980 Games produced the 'Miracle on Ice' US hockey win over the Soviet Union.

Lake Okeechobee, the largest lake in Florida, is notable for being how deep on average?

It covers 730 square miles, too wide to see across, yet is remarkably shallow for its size.

Champlain, between New York and Vermont, is sometimes given which grand nickname?

It connects to the St. Lawrence Seaway via the Richelieu River and to the Hudson via a canal.

The Salton Sea, California's largest lake, was formed in 1905 when water poured in from which waterway?

An engineer facing bankruptcy had cut a breach in the riverbank, and the flow could not be stopped for two years.

In 1980 Louisiana's Lake Peigneur drained after a Texaco rig drilled into what?

The ten-foot-deep lake became a whirlpool that swallowed barges, a drilling rig and 65 acres of land.

The ring-shaped Manicouagan Reservoir in Quebec occupies a crater made by what in the Late Triassic?

The impactor was about 5 km across, and the annular lake is visible from space as the 'eye of Quebec'.

New York's Finger Lakes are a group of how many long, narrow glacial lakes?

The name goes back to the late 19th century, and the region is now known for its wineries.

Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the largest of what kind of feature, the dried remnant of prehistoric lakes?

Its crust covers a pool of brine exceptionally rich in lithium.

Lake Wobegon, where 'all the children are above average', is a fictional town created by whom?

It was the setting of the 'News from Lake Wobegon' segment on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion.

In Arthurian legend, what does the Lady of the Lake give to King Arthur?

Depending on the tale she also raises Lancelot and disposes of the wizard Merlin.

Which composer wrote the ballet Swan Lake, first performed by the Bolshoi in 1877?

The story of Princess Odette, cursed to be a swan, drew on Russian and German folk tales.

The 1999 comedy-horror film Lake Placid features a giant what terrorising a Maine lake?

Betty White stole the film as the sweet old lady who had been feeding it cows.

The scientific study of lakes and other inland waters is called what?

The word comes from the Greek for 'lake' plus 'study of'.

Lakes of liquid ethane and methane have been photographed on the surface of which moon?

The Cassini-Huygens mission found them on Saturn's largest moon, and their shorelines look strikingly like Earth's.

A lake with no river or outlet draining it to the sea is described by which term?

The Caspian, the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake are all examples; evaporation is the only way water leaves.

Roughly what share of Earth's surface is covered by lakes?

Almost all of Earth's lake water sits in fewer than 100 large lakes, because volume scales faster than area.

Lonar Lake in India and Pingualuit in Quebec are examples of lakes formed by what?

Such lakes can hold sediment records of long-term climate change, as at El'gygytgyn in Siberia.

Finland has roughly how many lakes of at least 500 square metres?

About 57,000 of them are 'large', at 10,000 square metres or more.

What is the cold, dense bottom layer of a thermally stratified lake called?

The metalimnion is the transition zone above it, topped by the warmer epilimnion.

A landslide from which 1959 Montana earthquake dammed a river to form the aptly named Quake Lake?

Most landslide lakes vanish within months, but some, like Tajikistan's Sarez Lake, last over a century.

G. Evelyn Hutchinson's 1957 classification recognises how many major lake types by origin?

The 11 types are further divided into 76 subtypes.

A lake whose layers of differing density never intermix is described by which term?

With no oxygen in the deepest layer, bottom sediments stay undisturbed and form lacustrine deposits.

Which Swiss professor, the 'Father of limnology', first classified lakes by thermal stratification?

Hutchinson and Löffler later modified and improved his system.