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Concept
Lake Baikal
Summary
Lake Baikal (baɪˈkɑːl,_-ˈkæl ; Ozero Baykal ˈozjɪrə bɐjˈkaɫ; Baigal dalai) is a rift lake in Russia. It is situated in southern Siberia, between the federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Republic of Buryatia to the southeast. With of water, Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake by volume, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water, more than all of the North American Great Lakes combined. It is also the world's deepest lake, with a maximum depth of , and the world's oldest lake, at 25–30 million years. At —slightly larger than Belgium—Lake Baikal is the world's seventh-largest lake by surface area. It is among the world's clearest lakes.
Lake Baikal is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, many of them endemic to the region. It is also home to Buryat tribes, who raise goats, camels, cattle, sheep, and horses on the eastern side of the lake, where the mean temperature varies from a winter minimum of to a summer maximum of . The region to the east of Lake Baikal is referred to as Transbaikalia or as the Transbaikal, and the loosely defined region around the lake itself is sometimes known as Baikalia. UNESCO declared Baikal a World Heritage Site in 1996.
Lake Baikal is in a rift valley, created by the Baikal Rift Zone, where the Earth's crust is slowly pulling apart. At long and wide, Lake Baikal has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake in Asia, at , and is the deepest lake in the world at . The bottom of the lake is below sea level, but below this lies some of sediment, placing the rift floor some below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth.
In geological terms, the rift is young and active – it widens about 2 cm (0.8 in) per year. The fault zone is also seismically active; hot springs occur in the area and notable earthquakes happen every few years. The lake is divided into three basins: North, Central, and South, with depths about , , and , respectively. Fault-controlled accommodation zones rising to depths about separate the basins.
Official source
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