Located in south-central Siberia, not far from the Mongolian border and surrounded by mountains, forests and wild rivers, Baikal is an immense and breathtaking area of natural beauty. Although it's not the biggest lake in the world in size - that distinction goes to the salty Caspian Sea - it is the largest by volume. Where is Lake Baikal? Lake Baikal is highlighted in green below.
Protecting the lake's natural treasures. Lake Baikal is home to more than 2, species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world, including the Baikal omul fish and Baikal oil fish as well as the nerpa , one of the world's only freshwater species of seal.
Bears, elk, lynx and other wildlife abound in the surrounding forests and mountains. Despite its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site , Lake Baikal continues to come under threat from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off and other environmental problems, including nearby mining activities and potential oil and gas exploration. Found only in Lake Baikal, the Baikal seal Pusa sibirica , also known as the nerpa , is one of the only freshwater seal species in the world.
The nature of the lake itself lends it to great diversity. For one thing the lake is at least 25 million years old. It is also extremely deep, and unlike many deep lakes, all depths contain plenty of dissolved oxygen. Under such conditions, organisms have the entire lake in which to speciate. Species can differentiate at opposite ends of the lake, or in the same location but at different depths.
Several river systems drain into Baikal, so additional organisms have the opportunity to colonize the lake. Some of these species remain as they are, adding to the diversity, while others evolve in the lake into even more unique creatures. Unfortunately, climate change threatens this incredible place. According to Marianne V. Moore and colleagues in Bioscience , the base of the Baikal food web, tiny endemic algae called diatoms, are extremely dependent on the duration of ice cover. In Lake Baikal, the annual spring algae bloom that supplies oxygen and food to the lake through photosynthesis occurs under the ice.
This necessary event would be severely disrupted by changes in ice cover, potentially impacting the entire ecosystem of the lake. Moreover, the iconic freshwater seals require the ice for mating and molting. If ice were to melt too early, fertility of this unique species would decline.
Privacy Policy Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message. According to Moore et al. The researchers conclude:. The earthquakes deepen the lake and increase its size. For example, an earthquake resulted in the creation of Proval Bay, according to Irkutsk.
According to the Baikal Center, some geophysicists think that Lake Baikal is an ocean being born. The shores drift farther apart by 2 cm 0. Indigenous communities have lived around Lake Baikal since at least the sixth century B. It was the site of a battle in the Han-Xiongu War B. Local legend holds that Jesus visited Lake Baikal, according to Smithsonian magazine. Russia expanded its territory to include Lake Baikal during the 17th-century Russian conquest of Siberia.
The age, isolation and deep oxygenated water of Lake Baikal have resulted in one of the world's richest freshwater ecosystems.
About 80 percent of the more than 3, species found at Lake Baikal are endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else on Earth. Probably the most famous of these species is the nerpa, the world's only exclusively freshwater seal. Scientists are unsure how the nerpa came to Lake Baikal and evolved, but they suspect the seals might have swum down a prehistoric river from the Arctic, according to LakeBaikal. Other endemic species include the oily, scaleless golomyanka fish and the omul, a white fish that is one of Lake Baikal's most famous dishes.
Other land-based species around Lake Baikal include bears, reindeer, elk, wild boar, Siberian roe deer, polecats, ermine, sable and wolves. Aquatic invertebrate species include more than species of flat worms, more than species of anthropods insects, arachnids and crustaceans and more than species of mollusks. These invertebrates all help purify the water.
There are dozens of tree species, including cedar, fir and spruce, growing in the Lake Baikal area. Some of the trees are up to years old. The Angara pine tree is native to the area, according to Baikal World Web.
As Russia and Mongolia have become increasingly industrialized and tourism has increased, Lake Baikal has faced more and more threats to its environment.
Additionally, climate change is threatening its ecosystem. Water temperatures and ice cover have already changed, according to BioScience. Castner described several of the dangers facing Lake Baikal. The biggest threat is probably the "huge problem with algae on the lake and government failure to develop an adequate response to it," she said. Massive green algae blooms plague bodies of water like the Great Lakes, but for a long time Russian scientists assumed that Lake Baikal was too big to be affected by them.
But since at least , Spirogyra algae blooms have appeared on the bottom of the lake, according to National Geographic. The algae blooms are found in shallow water and wash up on shore, where they emit a horrible stench.
The algae are toxic to other species. The algae have damaged water snails, sponges, fish and crustaceans — which pass the toxins along to people, according to the New York Times. The concentration of algae in shallow water and the fact that algae blooms have historically appeared in areas with untreated sewage suggest that untreated sewage is a significant contributing factor to the problem.
0コメント