1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
Source :- http://worldtoptenthings.blogspot.in/2011/07/world-top-10-most-unique-lakes.html
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