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.