NASA MODIS Image of the Day: October 18, 2007 – Lake Biakal and Irkutsk
South of the Central Siberian Plateau in Russia, mountains surround Lake Baikal (right) in this image captured by the MODIS on the Terra satellite on October 17, 2007.
Lake Baikal is the world’s oldest, largest, and deepest freshwater lake.
Nearly a mile deep and holding over 23,000 cubic kilometers of water, it would require the total volume of all the Great Lakes to fill it up if it were ever drained! Lake Baikal provides a unique opportunity for climate change studies. Beneath the lake is a deep, 25-million-year-old continental rift containing thick, undisturbed sediment layers. The depth of sediments in some portions of the lake are as thick as 4 miles, providing a record of the effects of past climate variation on this high latitude lake. While the sediments do reveal previous glaciations of the nearby mountains, the sediments of the lake have never been scoured over by continental ice sheets, providing scientists a detailed record of climatic variation over the past 250,000 years. Over three hundred rivers feed the Lake, but only ones drains out. The Angara River, seen exiting the lake at its southwestern end, flows north where the city of Irkutsk is located. The city is visible on the image as slightly lighter brown and grid-like patches
