Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Russia - Lake Baikal (RU-24559)

As you've probably noticed, I'm uploading Asian cards today :) (I still have many other cards to upload, as I was away for some time). So, I decided to finish with a card from the Asian part of Russia that I've received today :)

Lake Baikal is in Southern Siberia in Russia, located between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, near the city of Irkutsk. It is 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. Like Lake Tanganyika, 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 worldand was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. At more than 25 million years old, it is the oldest lake in the world.


RU-24559

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