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Title: Lake Baikal
Author(s): Anson W. Mackay
Annotation: Lake Baikal, located in southeast Siberia, is one of the most unusual freshwater ecosystems in the world. It formed within a series of rift zones over 30 million years ago, making it by far the oldest living lake. Lake Baikal is also the deepest lake in the world, with a maximum depth of 1642 m. This great depth ensures that the lake contains the world’s largest volume of surface freshwater, some 20% of global resources, and 80% of resources found within the former Soviet Union (fSU). Lake Baikal has a remarkable freshwater flora and fauna: over 2500 animal and plant species have been identified; of which it is estimated over 75% are endemic (that is, they are found nowhere else in the world today). Biodiversity levels in the lake are extremely high, principally because of its great age allowing evolutionary processes to proceed, but also because the entire water column is saturated with oxygen, allowing extensive, deep-water, endemic faunal communities to exist. Over the last 30 years, Lake Baikal has been one of the fSU’s environmental causes celebres, due to both increasing exploitation of resources within the lake, and perhaps more importantly, increasing contamination of its water by pollution from industrial growth in the catchment. In recognition of Lake Baikal’s global ecological significance, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizationdeclared it a World Heritage Site in 1996.
Bibliographical description: Anson W. Mackay. Lake Baikal //Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change, Volume 3, Causes and consequences of global environmental change, pp 413–417.
Publication's type: статья
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