Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Dymaxion world map with the 15 largest lakes roughly to scale. This is a pair of lists of terrestrial lakes with a surface area of more than approximately 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 sq mi), ranked by area, [1] [2] [3] excluding reservoirs and lagoons.
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. [2] [3] [4] An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau.
However, because it is also the deepest lake, [6] with a maximum depth of 1,642 metres (5,387 feet; 898 fathoms), [1] Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake by volume, containing 23,615.39 km 3 (5,670 cu mi) of water [1] or 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water, [7] [8] more than all of the North American Great Lakes combined. [9]
In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's twelfth-largest known lake by volume, at 1,100 km 3 (260 cu mi). However, by 2007 it had shrunk to 10% of its original volume and was divided into three lakes, none of which are large enough to appear on this list. [17]
Below are the reservoirs (artificial lakes) in the world with a surface area exceeding 500 km 2 (190 sq mi). Reservoirs can be formed conventionally, by damming the outlet of a canyon or valley to form a lake; the largest of this type is Ghana's Lake Volta, with a water surface of 8,500 km 2 (3,300 sq mi).
Lake Kariba is the world's largest artificial lake and reservoir by volume. It lies 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) upstream from the mouth of the Zambezi river on the Indian Ocean , along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe .
In terms of volume, Lake Victoria is the world's ninth-largest continental lake, containing about 2,424 km 3 (1.965 × 10 9 acre⋅ft) of water. [7] [10] Lake Victoria occupies a shallow depression in Africa. The lake has an average depth of 40 m (130 ft) and a maximum depth of 80–81 m (262–266 ft).
Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by area and the third largest in volume, behind Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. The Caspian Sea, while larger than Lake Superior in both surface area and volume, is brackish. Lake Superior deepest point [4] on the bathymetric map. [1]