Largest Lakes, Greatest Depths, and Other Watery Data

[Glenn MacGrady]

Here are the 25 largest lakes in the world. Any member who has paddled them all gets a free t-shirt.



The Great Lakes superimposed on India:



The Great Lakes superimposed on central Europe:



The Great Lakes superimposed on Australia:



Depths of the Great Lakes:



Adding Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake and greatest volume of fresh water, to the Great Lakes depth profile:



Depths of lakes, oceans, shipwrecks, whales, mines, and (???) David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. (Don't understand this joke.) Larger image of this chart HERE.



Straddling the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea began receding in the 1960s. This dramatic change in surface area took the Aral Sea from the fourth largest lake on Earth to not even ranking in the top 50. Researchers note that the size of the lake has fluctuated a lot over history, but through the lens of modern history these recent changes happened rapidly, leaving local economies devastated and former shoreside towns landlocked.

 

[ScottS]

We missed paddling this lake, but only by 15,000 years. If anyone is a geology freak, I recommend looking into the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. Nick Zenter from Central Washington University does some great lectures available on youtube. Lake Missoula was over 2000 ft deep and formed by an ice dam. Whenever the dam broke, the flood waters would run across Idaho and Eastern Washington, then into the Columbia River.

Lake Missoula - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

One of Nick's lectures -

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

the Aral Sea began receding in the 1960s

The Aral Sea is an endorheic lake, otherwise known as a terminal lake. Terminal lakes in endorheic basins have inflows of water from rivers (and perhaps small amounts of rain) but no outflows; they are not connected to the sea. Terminal lakes only lose water by evaporation and perhaps a small amount of percolation into the ground as ground water. Their water levels are maintained by a balance, or imbalance, between river inflows and evaporation. They are typically in arid regions or deserts and are highly saline.

Water was deliberately diverted from the Aral Sea's main feeding rivers for Soviet irrigation projects.

As a canoe site, I am most interested if anyone has paddled any endorheic/terminal lakes. The largest terminal lake in the USA is the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and I believe the largest one in Canada is Big Quill Lake in Saskatchewan. The largest terminal lake in the world is the largest lake in the world: the Caspian Sea.

I paddled Pyramid Lake in Nevada in my 16' Old Town Guide canoe in 1980 or 1981.

I paddled Mono Lake in California in my outrigger canoe in 2004, weaving among the limestone tufa stacks. I have photos on an old computer I can't access, but here are two I pulled from the internet. The first is an aerial shot of Mono Lake:



The next shot shows the limestone tufa stacks that have been increasingly exposed from underwater to above water as the lake level has dropped significantly since 1941. Paddling among the tufas in this arid desert made me think of paddling on the moon.



In 1919 the level of the lake peaked at 6427' above sea level. Birds bred and nested on a few volcanic islands in the lake, sustained by the extensive brine shrimp and alkali flies, which also attracted large numbers of migratory birds such as gulls.

In 1941, Los Angeles began redirecting water from the streams feeding Mono Lake into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. As time passed, this both reduced the level of the lake and dried out the lower sections of the source streams. By 1981 the level of the lake had been reduced to 6372' above sea level, with the lake's volume cut in half, and its salinity doubled. Negit Island, a breeding site for birds, developed a land bridge and became susceptible to land-based predators such as coyotes. The lake level has been rising somewhat in the past 15 years due to lawsuits and activities of the Mono Lake Committee.

Have you paddled a terminal lake?

 

[Foxyotter]

Just a T-shirt! Lake Vostok is almost 2.5 miles under ice. I'll buy ya an excellent dinner and drinks if you can complete that list. Even if you had to skip Lake Vostok.
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron is more like two basins on one lake in my mind.

 

[Halpc]

I have paddled on the Great Salt Lake a few times, usually in my sea kayak. It has good views of the Wasatch mountains to the east, but the closeup shoreline views are pretty non descript. It is very shallow and is receding rapidly, leaving wide salt flats along a lot of the shore. The high salinity was a pain to deal with- everything gets encrusted with salt. I couldn’t really notice an increase in buoyancy due to the “thick” water, but it is easy to float in.

 

[clemency]

Probable origin of the Bowie/Mercury reference, though it has nothing to do water. Just for closure.