Portal:Lakes
Portal maintenance status: (October 2020)
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The Lakes Portal
A portal dedicated to Lakes
- Thunder Lake in Northern Alberta
- A view of Goëngarijpsterpoelen, one of the Frisian Lakes
- A view of West Lake in Hangzhou, China
- A view of the six lowest (and largest) lakes of the Seven Rila Lakes
- A view of Lake Teletskoye, the largest lake in the Altai Mountains and the Altai Republic, Russia
- A view of Isojärvi in Satakunta, Western Finland
Introduction
A lake is a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although they may be connected with the ocean by rivers, such as Lake Ontario. Most lakes are freshwater and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume.
Lakes are typically larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars at coastal regions of oceans or large lakes. Most lakes are fed by springs, and both fed and drained by creeks and rivers, but some lakes are endorheic without any outflow, while volcanic lakes are filled directly by precipitation runoffs and do not have any inflow streams.
Natural lakes are generally found in mountainous areas (i.e. alpine lakes), dormant volcanic craters, rift zones and areas with ongoing glaciation. Other lakes are found in depressed landforms or along the courses of mature rivers, where a river channel has widened over a basin formed by eroded floodplains and wetlands. Some parts of the world have many lakes formed by the chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last ice age. All lakes are temporary over long periods of time, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them. (Full article...)
Selected article -
Uvs Lake (Mongolian: Увс нуур, romanized: Uws nuur, pronounced [ʊw̜s ˈnʊːr]; Russian: Озеро Убсу-Нур, romanized: Ozero Ubsu-Nur) is a highly saline lake in an endorheic basin—Uvs Nuur Basin, primarily in Mongolia with a smaller part in Russia. It is the largest lake in Mongolia by surface area, covering 3,350 km2 at 759 m above sea level.
The northeastern tip of the lake is situated in the Tuva Republic of the Russian Federation. The largest settlement near the lake is Ulaangom. This shallow and very saline body of water is a remainder of a huge saline sea which covered a much larger area several thousand years ago. (Full article...)General topics
Lake zones |
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Lake stratification |
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Lake types |
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See also |
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- List of lakes
- Lists of lakes
- List of lakes by area
- List of lakes by depth
- List of drying lakes
- List of international lakes
- List of ancient lakes
- List of prehistoric lakes
- List of largest lakes and seas in the Solar System
- Limnology
- Lake ecosystem
- Lake stratification
- Ancient lake
- Former lake
- Shrunken lake
- Salt lake
- Lava lake
- Reservoir
- Lakes of Titan
Need assistance?
Do you have a question about lakes that you can't find the answer to? Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
General images -
- Image 3The first view of the sediment at the bottom of subglacial Lake Whillans, captured by the WISSARD expedition. Image credit: NASA/JPL, California Institute of Technology (from Subglacial lake)
- Image 4The Nowitna River in Alaska. Two oxbow lakes – a short one at the bottom of the picture and a longer, more curved one at the middle-right. (from Lake)
- Image 5Soda Lakes in Nevada, USA (from Volcanogenic lake)
- Image 6A view of the southern polar plain of Mars. The area where a subglacial lake has been detected is highlighted. Image credit: USGS Astrogeology Science Center, Arizona State University (from Subglacial lake)
- Image 7Ephemeral 'Lake Badwater', a lake only noted after heavy winter and spring rainfall, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, 9 February 2005. Landsat 5 satellite photo (from Lake)
- Image 10Satellite image of subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica. Image credit: NASA (from Subglacial lake)
- Image 12Garibaldi Lake in British Columbia, Canada, is impounded by lava flows comprising The Barrier (from Volcanogenic lake)
- Image 13Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin first proposed the idea of fresh water under Antarctic ice. (from Subglacial lake)
- Image 14Titan's north polar hydrocarbon seas and lakes, as seen in a false-color Cassini synthetic aperture radar mosaic (from Lake)
- Image 17An illustration of ice core drilling above subglacial Lake Vostok. These drilling efforts collected re-frozen lake water that has been analyzed to understand the lake's chemistry. Image credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller / US National Science Foundation (from Subglacial lake)
- Image 19An artist's depiction of the subglacial lakes and rivers beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Image credit: Zina Deretsky / US National Science Foundation (from Subglacial lake)
- Image 23Round Tangle Lake, one of the Tangle Lakes, 2,864 feet (873 m) above sea level in interior Alaska (from Lake)
- Image 24Crater Lake in Oregon, USA (from Volcanogenic lake)
- Image 26Lava lake at Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (from Volcanogenic lake)
- Image 29Cross sectional diagram of limnological lake zones (left) and algal community types (right) (from Lake)
- Image 31A schematic cross-section of the subglacial pool beneath Taylor Glacier and its outflow, Blood Falls. Image credit: Zina Deretsky / US National Science Foundation (from Subglacial lake)
Related portals
WikiProjects
- WikiProject Lakes
- WikiProject Rivers
- WikiProject Oceans
- WikiProject Water
Categories
More articles
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Glaciers |
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Lakes on the Altiplano | |
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Present-day lakes and salt pans |
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Lake expansions of Lake Titicaca |
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Ancient lakes |
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Other paleolakes and lake expansions in the region | |
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Main lakes |
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Secondary lakes |
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Rivers |
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Hydrography of Bosnia and Herzegovina | |||||||
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Lakes portal ♦ Rivers portal ♦ Wetlands portal ♦ List of rivers of Bosnia and Herzegovina ♦ List of lakes of Bosnia and Herzegovina ♦ List of karst springs in Bosnia and Herzegovina |
Lakes of Burundi | |
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Lakes of China | ||
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Five Great Lakes | ||
Notable freshwater lakes |
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Notable salt lakes |
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Major urban lakes |
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Reservoirs |
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Bodies of water at Walt Disney World | |
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Lakes and principal tarns in the English Lake District | |
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New York's Finger Lakes | |
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Eastern Georgia |
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Western Georgia |
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Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin | |
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Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River Basin | |
Savannah River Basin |
Great Lakes of North America | |||||||||||||
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Historic geology |
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Lakes of Himachal Pradesh | |
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Low-altitude lakes |
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Mid-altitude lakes |
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High-altitude lakes |
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Reservoirs |
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Related topics |
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Lakes of Iceland | ||
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Lakes in Japan | |
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Hokkaido region | |
Tōhoku region | |
Kantō region |
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Chūbu region | |
Kansai region | |
San'in region |
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Kyūshū region | |
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Lakes and reservoirs of Kentucky | ||
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Lakes of Kenya | |
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Kurtna Lake District in Estonia | |
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Lakes in Kosovo | |
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"The Largest Lake in the Philippines" | |||||||
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Basin country |
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Primary outflow |
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Luzon, Philippines |
Lakes/ponds |
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Reservoirs |
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Lakes in Mongolia | |
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Lakes |
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Lakes of New Mexico | |
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Lakes and other natural bodies of water in New South Wales, Australia | |
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Coastal lagoons and lakes |
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Freshwater |
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Lakes in Norway | |||||
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Lakes of Nunavut | |
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Kitikmeot Region | |
Kivalliq Region | |
Qikiqtaaluk Region | |
Lakes of the Philippines | |
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Minor |
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Pleistocene proglacial lakes and related seas | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Asia |
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North America |
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10 largest lakes in Sweden | |
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Lakes of Switzerland | ||
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Major lakes |
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Lists |
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Lakes and other bodies of water in Tasmania, Australia | |
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Coastal lagoons and lakes | |
Freshwater | |
Glacial | |
Salt |
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Man-made reservoirs | |
Lakes and reservoirs of Tennessee | |
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East Tennessee |
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Middle Tennessee |
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West Tennessee |
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Major reservoirs and lakes of Texas | ||||||
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Lakes of Turkey | |
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Natural lakes |
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Artificial lakes | |
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Lakes of the United States | |
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States |
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Federal district | Washington, D.C. |
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Cities | ||
Neighboring lakes and dams | ||
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Lakes and other waterbodies of Victoria, Australia | |||||||||||||||||
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Natural lakes in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau | |
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Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
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Dictionary and thesaurus
External media
- World Lake Database. International Lake Environment Committee Foundation. – provides a searchable database
- Global Lakes and Wetlands Database. World Wide Fund for Nature. – available for free download
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