Lake

The Caspian Sea is considered either the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea.[1]
Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada
Blowdown Lake in the mountains near Pemberton, British Columbia
Lake Maracaibo (technically a bay), Venezuela. Green swirls on the lake are duckweed.

A lake is a terrain feature (or physical feature), a body of liquid on the surface of a world that is localized to the bottom of basin (another type of landform or terrain feature; that is not global). Another definition is a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size that is surrounded by land. On Earth a body of water is considered a lake when it is inland, not part of the ocean, is larger and deeper than a pond.[2][3] The only world other than Earth known to harbor lakes is Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which has lakes containing ethane, most likely mixed with methane. It is presumed that Titan's lakes are fed by rivers, as Titan's surface is carved by numerous river beds. There is a evidence that Mars once held lakes of water.

Natural lakes on Earth are generally found in mountainous areas, rift zones, and areas with ongoing or recent glaciation. Other lakes are found in endorheic basins or along the courses of mature rivers. In some parts of the world there are many lakes because of chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last Ice Age. All lakes are temporary over geologic time scales, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them.

Contents

Etymology, meaning, and usage of "lake"

The word lake comes from Middle English lake ("lake, pond, waterway"), from Old English lacu ("pond, pool, stream"), from Proto-Germanic *lakō ("pond, ditch, slow moving stream"), from the Proto-Indo-European root *leg'- ("to leak, drain"). Cognates include Dutch laak ("lake, pond, ditch"), Middle Low German lāke ("water pooled in a riverbed, puddle"), German Lache ("pool, puddle"), and Icelandic lækur ("slow flowing stream"). Also related are the English words leak and leach.

There is considerable uncertainty about defining the difference between lakes and ponds, and no current internationally accepted definition of either term across scientific disciplines or political boundaries exists. For example, limnologists have defined lakes as water bodies which are simply a larger version of a pond, which have wave action on the shoreline or where wind-induced turbulence plays a major role in mixing the water column. None of these definitions completely excludes ponds and all are difficult to measure. For this reason there has been increasing use made of simple size-based definitions to separate ponds and lakes. One definition of lake is a body of water of 2 hectares (5 acres) or more in area,[4]:331[5] however others have defined lakes as waterbodies of 5 hectares (12 acres) and above, or 8 hectares (20 acres) and above (see also the definition of "pond"). Charles Elton, one of the founders of ecology, regarded lakes as waterbodies of 40 hectares (99 acres) or more.[6] The term lake is also used to describe a feature such as Lake Eyre, which is a dry basin most of the time but may become filled under seasonal conditions of heavy rainfall. In common usage many lakes bear names ending with the word pond, and a lesser number of names ending with lake are in quasi-technical fact, ponds.

In lake ecology the environment of a lake is referred to as lacustrine. Large lakes are occasionally referred to as "inland seas," and small seas are occasionally referred to as lakes, such as Lake Maracaibo, which is actually a bay. Larger lakes often invert the word order, as in the names of each of the Great Lakes,in North America.

Only one lake in the English Lake District is actually called a lake; other than Bassenthwaite Lake, the others are all meres or waters. Only six bodies of water in Scotland are known as lakes (the others are lochs): the Lake of Menteith, the Lake of the Hirsel, Pressmennan Lake, Cally Lake near Gatehouse of Fleet, the saltwater Manxman's Lake at Kirkcudbright Bay and The Lake at Fochabers. Of these only the Lake of Menteith and Cally Lake are natural bodies of fresh water.

Distribution of lakes

The Seven Rila Lakes are a group of glacial lakes in the Bulgarian Rila mountains.
Oeschinen Lake in the Swiss Alps.

The majority of lakes on Earth are fresh water, and most lie in the Northern Hemisphere at higher latitudes. More than 60 percent of the world's lakes are in Canada; this is because of the deranged drainage system that dominates the country.

Finland is known as The Land of the Thousand Lakes, (actually there are 187,888 lakes in Finland, of which 60,000 are large),[7] and the U.S. state of Minnesota is known as The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. The license plates of the Canadian province of Manitoba used to claim 100,000 lakes[8] as one-upmanship on Minnesota, whose license plates boast of its 10,000 lakes.[9]

Most lakes have at least one natural outflow in the form of a river or stream, which maintain a lakes's average level by allowing the drainage of excess water.[10] Some do not and lose water solely by evaporation or underground seepage or both. They are termed endorheic lakes (see below).

Many lakes are artificial and are constructed for hydro-electric power generation, aestetic purposes, recreational purposes, industrial use, agricultural use or domestic water supply.

Evidence of extraterrestrial lakes exists; "definitive evidence of lakes filled with methane" was announced by NASA as returned by the Cassini Probe observing the moon Titan, which orbits the planet Saturn.

Globally, lakes are greatly outnumbered by ponds: of an estimated 304-million standing water bodies worldwide, 91 percent are 1 hectare (2.5 acres) or less in area (see definition of ponds).[11] Small lakes are also much more numerous than big lakes: in terms of area, one-third of the world's standing water is represented by lakes and ponds of 10 hectares (25 acres) or less. However, large lakes contribute disproportionately to the area of standing water with 122 large lakes of 1,000 square kilometres (390 sq mi, 100,000 ha, 247,000 acres) or more representing about 29 percent of the total global area of standing inland water.

Origin of natural lakes

Ipperwash Beach, Lake Huron, Ontario, Canada
A portion of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, United States
Salt crystals, on the shore of Lake Urmia, Iran

There are a number of natural processes that can form lakes. A recent tectonic uplift of a mountain range can create bowl-shaped depressions that accumulate water and form lakes. The advance and retreat of glaciers can scrape depressions in the surface where water accumulates; such lakes are common in Scandinavia, Patagonia, Siberia and Canada. The most notable examples are probably the Great Lakes of North America.

Lakes can also form by means of landslides or by glacial blockages. An example of the latter occurred during the last ice age in the U.S. state of Washington, when a huge lake formed behind a glacial flow; when the ice retreated, the result was an immense flood that created the Dry Falls at Sun Lakes, Washington.

Salt lakes (also called saline lakes) can form where there is no natural outlet or where the water evaporates rapidly and the drainage surface of the water table has a higher-than-normal salt content. Examples of salt lakes include Great Salt Lake, the Aral Sea and the Dead Sea.

Small, crescent-shaped lakes called oxbow lakes can form in river valleys as a result of meandering. The slow-moving river forms a sinuous shape as the outer side of bends are eroded away more rapidly than the inner side. Eventually a horseshoe bend is formed and the river cuts through the narrow neck. This new passage then forms the main passage for the river and the ends of the bend become silted up, thus forming a bow-shaped lake.

Crater lakes are formed in volcanic craters and calderas which fill up with precipitation more rapidly than they empty via evaporation. Sometimes the latter are called caldera lakes, although often no distinction is made. An example is Crater Lake in Oregon, located within the caldera of Mount Mazama. The caldera was created in a massive volcanic eruption that led to the subsidence of Mount Mazama around 4860 BC.

Gloe Lakes are freshwater lakes that have emerged when the water they consists of has been separated, not considerably long before, from the sea as a consequence of post-glacial rebound.

Some lakes, such as Lake Jackson in Florida, USA, come into existence as a result of sinkhole activity.

Lake Vostok is a subglacial lake in Antarctica, possibly the largest in the world. The pressure from the ice atop it and its internal chemical composition mean that, if the lake were drilled into, a fissure could result that would spray somewhat like a geyser.

Most lakes are geologically young and shrinking since the natural results of erosion will tend to wear away the sides and fill the basin. Exceptions are those such as Lake Baikal and Lake Tanganyika that lie along continental rift zones and are created by the crust's subsidence as two plates are pulled apart. These lakes are the oldest and deepest in the world. Lake Baikal, which is 25-30 million years old, is deepening at a faster rate than it is being filled by erosion and may be destined over millions of years to become attached to the global ocean. The Red Sea, for example, is thought to have originated as a rift valley lake.

Types of lakes

One of the many artificial lakes in Arizona at sunset.
The crater lake of Volcán Irazú, Costa Rica.
These kettle lakes in Alaska were formed by a retreating glacier.
Ephemeral 'Lake Badwater', a lake only noted after heavy winter and spring rainfall, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park.

Characteristics

Lake Mapourika, New Zealand

Lakes have numerous features in addition to lake type, such as drainage basin (also known as catchment area), inflow and outflow, nutrient content, dissolved oxygen, pollutants, pH, and sedimentation.

Changes in the level of a lake are controlled by the difference between the input and output compared to the total volume of the lake. Significant input sources are precipitation onto the lake, runoff carried by streams and channels from the lake's catchment area, groundwater channels and aquifers, and artificial sources from outside the catchment area. Output sources are evaporation from the lake, surface and groundwater flows, and any extraction of lake water by humans. As climate conditions and human water requirements vary, these will create fluctuations in the lake level.

Lakes can be also categorized on the basis of their richness in nutrients, which typically affect plant growth. Nutrient-poor lakes are said to be oligotrophic and are generally clear, having a low concentration of plant life. Mesotrophic lakes have good clarity and an average level of nutrients. Eutrophic lakes are enriched with nutrients, resulting in good plant growth and possible algal blooms. Hypertrophic lakes are bodies of water that have been excessively enriched with nutrients. These lakes typically have poor clarity and are subject to devastating algal blooms. Lakes typically reach this condition due to human activities, such as heavy use of fertilizers in the lake catchment area. Such lakes are of little use to humans and have a poor ecosystem due to decreased dissolved oxygen.

Due to the unusual relationship between water's temperature and its density, lakes form layers called thermoclines, layers of drastically varying temperature relative to depth. Fresh water is most dense at about 4 degrees Celsius (39.2 °F) at sea level. When the temperature of the water at the surface of a lake reaches the same temperature as deeper water, as it does during the cooler months in temperate climates, the water in the lake can mix, bringing oxygen-starved water up from the depths and bringing oxygen down to decomposing sediments. Deep temperate lakes can maintain a reservoir of cold water year-round, which allows some cities to tap that reservoir for deep lake water cooling.

Lake Teletskoye, Siberia

Since the surface water of deep tropical lakes never reaches the temperature of maximum density, there is no process that makes the water mix. The deeper layer becomes oxygen starved and can become saturated with carbon dioxide, or other gases such as sulfur dioxide if there is even a trace of volcanic activity. Exceptional events, such as earthquakes or landslides, can cause mixing which rapidly brings the deep layers up to the surface and release a vast cloud of gas which lay trapped in solution in the colder water at the bottom of the lake. This is called a limnic eruption. An example is the disaster at Lake Nyos in Cameroon. The amount of gas that can be dissolved in water is directly related to pressure. As deep water surfaces, the pressure drops and a vast amount of gas comes out of solution. Under these circumstances carbon dioxide is hazardous because it is heavier than air and displaces it, so it may flow down a river valley to human settlements and cause mass asphyxiation.

The material at the bottom of a lake, or lake bed, may be composed of a wide variety of inorganics, such as silt or sand, and organic material, such as decaying plant or animal matter. The composition of the lake bed has a significant impact on the flora and fauna found within the lake's environs by contributing to the amounts and the types of nutrients available.

A paired (black and white) layer of the varved lake sediments correspond to a year. During winter, when organisms die, carbon is deposited down, resulting to a black layer. At the same year, during summer, only few organic materials are deposited, resulting to a white layer at the lake bed. These are commonly used to track past paleontological events.

Limnology

Lake Billy Chinook, Deschutes National Forest, Oregon.

Limnology is the study of inland bodies of water and related ecosystems. Limnology divides lakes into three zones: the littoral zone, a sloped area close to land; the photic or open-water zone, where sunlight is abundant; and the deep-water profundal or benthic zone, where little sunlight can reach. The depth to which light can reach in lakes depends on turbidity, determined by the density and size of suspended particles. A particle is in suspension if its weight is less than the random turbidity forces acting upon it. These particles can be sedimentary or biological in origin and are responsible for the color of the water. Decaying plant matter, for instance, may be responsible for a yellow or brown color, while algae may cause greenish water. In very shallow water bodies, iron oxides make water reddish brown. Biological particles include algae and detritus. Bottom-dwelling detritivorous fish can be responsible for turbid waters, because they stir the mud in search of food. Piscivorous fish contribute to turbidity by eating plant-eating (planktonivorous) fish, thus increasing the amount of algae (see aquatic trophic cascade). The light depth or transparency is measured by using a Secchi disk, a 20-cm (8 in) disk with alternating white and black quadrants. The depth at which the disk is no longer visible is the Secchi depth, a measure of transparency. The Secchi disk is commonly used to test for eutrophication. For a detailed look at these processes, see lentic ecosystems.

A lake moderates the surrounding region's temperature and climate because water has a very high specific heat capacity (4,186 J·kg−1·K−1). In the daytime a lake can cool the land beside it with local winds, resulting in a sea breeze; in the night it can warm it with a land breeze.

How lakes disappear

Lake Chad in a 2001 satellite image, with the actual lake in blue, and vegetation on top of the old lake bed in green.
Lake Badwater, February 9, 2005. Landsat 5 satellite photo.
Badwater Basin dry lake, February 15, 2007. Landsat 5 satellite photo.

A lake may be infilled with deposited sediment and gradually become a wetland such as a swamp or marsh. Large water plants, typically totos, accelerate this closing process significantly because they partially decompose to form peat soils that fill the shallows. Conversely, peat soils in a marsh can naturally burn and reverse this process to recreate a shallow lake. Turbid lakes and lakes with many plant-eating fish tend to disappear more slowly. A "disappearing" lake (barely noticeable on a human timescale) typically has extensive plant mats at the water's edge. These become a new habitat for other plants, like peat moss when conditions are right, and animals, many of which are very rare. Gradually the lake closes and young peat may form, forming a fen. In lowland river valleys where a river can meander, the presence of peat is explained by the infilling of historical oxbow lakes. In the very last stages of succession, trees can grow in, eventually turning the wetland into a forest.

Some lakes can disappear seasonally. These are called intermittent lakes and can be found in karstic terrain. A prime example of an intermittent lake is Lake Cerknica in Slovenia. Other intermittent lakes are only the result of above-average precipitation in a closed, or endorheic basin, usually filling dry lake beds. This can occur in some of the driest places on earth, like Death Valley. This occurred in the spring of 2005, after unusually heavy rains.[12] The lake did not last into the summer, and was quickly evaporated (see photos to right). A more commonly filled lake of this type is Sevier Lake of west-central Utah.

Sometimes a lake will disappear quickly. On 3 June 2005, in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, a lake called Lake Beloye vanished in a matter of minutes. News sources reported that government officials theorized that this strange phenomenon may have been caused by a shift in the soil underneath the lake that allowed its water to drain through channels leading to the Oka River.[13]

The presence of ground permafrost is important to the persistence of some lakes. According to research published in the journal Science ("Disappearing Arctic Lakes", June 2005), thawing permafrost may explain the shrinking or disappearance of hundreds of large Arctic lakes across western Siberia. The idea here is that rising air and soil temperatures thaw permafrost, allowing the lakes to drain away into the ground.

Neusiedler See, located in Austria and Hungary, has dried up many times over the millennia. As of 2005 it is again rapidly losing water, giving rise to the fear that it will be completely dry by 2010.

Some lakes disappear because of human development factors. The shrinking Aral Sea is described as being "murdered" by the diversion for irrigation of the rivers feeding it.

Extraterrestrial lakes

Titan's north polar hydrocarbon seas and lakes as seen in a false-color Cassini synthetic aperture radar mosaic.

At present the surface of the planet Mars is too cold and has too little atmospheric pressure to permit the pooling of liquid water on the surface. Geologic evidence appears to confirm, however, that ancient lakes once formed on the surface. It is also possible that volcanic activity on Mars will occasionally melt subsurface ice, creating large lakes. Under current conditions this water would quickly freeze and evaporate unless insulated in some manner, such as by a coating of volcanic ash.

Only one world other than Earth is known to harbor lakes, Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Photographs and spectroscopic analysis by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft show liquid ethane on the surface, which is thought to be mixed with liquid methane.

Jupiter's small moon Io is volcanically active due to tidal stresses, and as a result sulfur deposits have accumulated on the surface. Some photographs taken during the Galileo mission appear to show lakes of liquid sulfur on the surface.[14]

There are dark basaltic plains on the Moon, similar to lunar maria but smaller, that are called lacus (singular lacus, Latin for "lake") because they were thought by early astronomers to be lakes of water.

Notable lakes

Round Tangle Lake, one of the Tangle Lakes, located 2,864 feet (873 m) above sea level in interior Alaska

Largest by continent

The largest lakes (surface area) by continent are:

See also

Lake zones
Littoral zone
Limnetic zone
Profundal zone
Benthic zone
Lake stratification
Epilimnion
Metalimnion
Hypolimnion
Lake types
Holomictic lake
   Monomictic lake
   Dimictic lake
   Polymictic lake
Meromictic lake
Amictic lake
Aquatic ecosystems
Wild fisheries
  • List of lakes
  • List of world's largest lakes
  • List of world's deepest lakes
  • List of lakes in the United States
  • List of largest lakes of Western Europe
  • List of lakes in Austria
  • Loch
  • Lough
  • Pond
  • Lagoon
  • Liman

References

  1. The Caspian Sea is generally regarded by geographers, biologists and limnologists as a huge inland salt lake. However, the Caspian large size means that for some purposes it is better modeled as a sea. Geologically, the Caspian, Black and Mediterranean seas are remnants of the ancient Tethys Ocean. Politically, the distinction between a sea and a lake may affect how the Caspian is treated by international law.
  2. Britannica online. "Lake (physical feature)". http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/328083/lake. Retrieved 2008-06-25. "[a Lake is] any relatively large body of slowly moving or standing water that occupies an inland basin of appreciable size. Definitions that precisely distinguish lakes, ponds, swamps, and even rivers and other bodies of nonoceanic water are not well established. It may be said, however, that rivers and streams are relatively fast moving; marshes and swamps contain relatively large quantities of grasses, trees or shrubs; and ponds are relatively small in comparison to lakes. Geologically defined, lakes are temporary bodies of water." 
  3. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lake a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size, surrounded by land. "Dictionary.com definition"]. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lake a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size, surrounded by land.. Retrieved 2008-06-25. 
  4. Williams, Penny; Whitfield, Mericia; Biggs, Jeremy; Bray, Simon; Fox, Gill; Nicolet, Pascale; Sear, David (2004). "Comparative biodiversity of rivers, streams, ditches and ponds in an agricultural landscape in Southern England". Biological Conservation 115 (2): 329–341. doi:10.1016/S0006-3207(03)00153-8. http://www.seaturtle.org/PDF/Williams_2003_BiolConserv.pdf. Retrieved 2009-06-16. 
  5. Moss, Brian; Johnes, Penny; Phillips, Geoffrey (1996). "The monitoring of ecological quality and the classification of standing waters in temperate regions:". Biological Reviews 71 (2): 301–339. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.1996.tb00750.x. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119958386/abstract. Retrieved 2009-06-16. 
  6. Elton, Charles Sutherland; Miller, Richard S. (1954). "The Ecological Survey of Animal Communities: With a Practical System of Classifying Habitats by Structural Characters". The Journal of Ecology (British Ecological Society) 42 (2): 460–496. doi:10.2307/2256872. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2256872. Retrieved 2009-06-16. 
  7. Statistics Finland
  8. Licence Plates of the World
  9. Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services
  10. Carreck, Rosalind, ed (1982). The Family Encyclopedia of Natural History. The Hamlyn Publishing Group. pp. 205. ISBN 011202257. 
  11. Downing JA, Prairie YT, Cole JJ, Duarte CM, Tranvick LJ, Striegel RG, McDowell WH, Kortelainen P, Melack JM, Middleburg JJ (2006). The global abundance and size distribution of lakes, ponds and impoundments. Limnology and Oceanography, 51: 2388-2397.
  12. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4521310
  13. :: The Montana Standard ::
  14. The Nine Planets Solar System Tour. "Io". http://www.nineplanets.org/io.html. Retrieved 2008-08-07. 
  15. Andes Website - Information about Ojos del Salado volcano, a high mountain in South America and the world's highest volcano
  16. Highest Lake
  17. The Lake and Island Combination

External links