Plitvice Lakes (Croatia): Sixteen Lakes interconnected by Spectacular Waterfalls
The Plitvice Lakes are a series of sixteen lakes interconnected by
spectacular waterfalls, set in a deep woodland and populated by deers,
bears, wolves, boars and rare bird species.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the lakes are renowned for their
distinctive colours, ranging from azure to green, grey or blue. The
colours change constantly depending on the quantity of minerals or
organisms in the water and the angle of sunlight.
Boiling Lake (Dominica): A Flooded Fumarole
The Boiling Lake is situated in the Morne Trois Pitons National Park, Dominica's World Heritage site.
It is a flooded fumarole, or hole in the earth’s surface, 10.5 km east of Roseau, Dominica, on the Caribbean.
It is filled with bubbling greyish-blue water that is usually enveloped in a cloud of vapor.
The lake is approximately 60 m across.
Red Lagoon (Bolivia): Red (algae) + White (borax)
The Laguna Colorada (Red Lagoon) is a shallow salt lake in the southwest
of the altiplano of Bolivia, close to the border with Chile.
The lake contains borax islands, whose white color contrasts nicely with
the reddish color of its waters, caused by red sediments and
pigmentation of some algae.
Five-Flower Lake (China): Beautiful Multi-Coloured Lake with Fallen Tree Trunks
The Wuhua Hai, or Five-Flower Lake, is the signature of the Jiuzhaigon
National Park in China.
The lake is a shallow multi-coloured lake whose bottom is littered with
fallen tree trunks.
The water is so clear that you can see the trunks clearly. The water
comes in different shares of turquoise, from yellowish to green, to
blue.
It is located at an elevation of 2472 meters, below Panda Lake and above
the Pearl Shoal Waterfall.
Dead Sea (Israel and Jordan): Lowest Point on Earth
The Dead Sea is a salt lake situated between Israel and the West bank to
the west, and Jordan to the east. It is 420 meters (1,378 ft) below sea
level and its shores are the lowest point on the surface of the Earth
on dry land. The Dead Sea is 330 m (1,083 ft) deep, the deepest
hypersaline lake in the world. It is also the world's second saltiest
body of water, after Lake Assal in Djibouti, with 30 percent salinity.
It is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. This salinity makes for a harsh
environment where animals cannot flourish and boats cannot sail. The
Dead Sea is 67 kilometers (42 mi) long and 18 kilometers (11 mi) wide at
its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main
tributary is the Jordan River.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin
for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King
David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the
Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from
balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers.
Lake Baikal (Russia): Deepest and Oldest Lake in the World
Lake Baikal is located in Southern Siberia in Russia, and it's also
known as the "Blue Eye of Siberia". It contains more water than all the
North American Great Lakes combined.
At 1,637 meters (5,371 ft), Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the
world, and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, holding
approximately twenty percent of the world's total fresh water. However,
Lake Baikal contains less than one third the amount of water as the
Caspian Sea which is the largest lake in the world.
Lake Baikal was formed in an ancient rift valley and therefore is long
and crescent-shaped with a surface area (31,500 km²) slightly less than
that of Lake Superior or Lake Victoria. Baikal is home to more than
1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found
nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site
in 1996. At more than 25 million years old, it is the oldest lake in the
world.
Lake Titicaca (Bolivia and Peru): World's Highest Navigable Lake
Lake Titicaca is a lake located on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It
sits 3,812 m (12,500 ft) above sea level making it the highest
commercially navigable lake in the world. By volume of water it is also
the largest lake in South America.
Lake Titicaca is fed by rainfall and meltwater from glaciers on the
sierras that abut the Altiplano.
Caspian Sea (Russia): World's Largest Lake
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest lake or largest inland body of
water in the world, and accounts for 40 to 44 percent of the total
lacustrine waters of the world.
With a surface area of 394,299 km² (152,240 mi²), it has a surface area
greater than the next six largest lakes combined.
Crater Lake (USA): its waters are considered one of the World's Most Clearest
Crater Lake is a caldera lake located in Oregon; due to several unique
factors, most prominently that it has no inlets or tributaries, the
waters of Crater Lake are considered one of the world's most clearest.
The lake partly fills a nearly 4,000 foot (1,220 m) deep caldera that
was formed around 5,677 (± 150) BC by the collapse of the volcano Mount
Mazama.
Its deepest point has been measured at 1,949 feet (594 m) deep, making
it the deepest lake in the United States, and the ninth deepest in the
world.
Lake Karachay (Russia): Most Polluted Spot on Earth
Lake Karachay is a small lake in the southern Ural mountains in western
Russia. Starting in 1951 the Soviet Union used Karachay as a dumping
site for radioactive waste from Mayak, the nearby nuclear waste storage
and reprocessing facility, located near the town of Ozyorsk.
According to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute
on nuclear waste, Karachay is the "most polluted spot" on Earth. The
lake accumulated some 4.44 exabecquerels (EBq) of radioactivity,
including 3.6 EBq of Caesium-137 and 0.74 EBq of Strontium-90. For
comparison, the Chernobyl disaster released from 5 to 12 EBq of
radioactivity, however this radiation is not concentrated in one
location.
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