The determination of the Caspian Sea as a lake or a sea is in dispute and under negotiation between the 5 littoral states bordering it. A previous agreement between the Soviet Union and Iran listed it as a lake but since the break-up of the USSR the new littoral nations have refused to acknoweldge the previous treaty. If the Caspian were a lake the resources (oil, gas, fishing) and area would be split evenly between the five but if it is a sea the borders would be drawn out from the borders of each nation which would mean Iran would have considerably less territory under their control. There are other concerns but this is the primary issue.
I was surprised to not find the Aral Sea on this list. I know it's been shrinking a lot, but still! So I went to Wikipedia to check, and was shocked to find out that it doesn't even exist anymore! D:
The Northern part has rebounded most of the way, and is climbing towards normal levels. But the Syr Darya cannot fill the entire sea by itself so whatever extra water they let out just dries up. The western part is still shrinking but it has more depth to area so it is dropping slower.
i knew baikal. it was on the tip of my tongue. i tried baikan, balkan, balkai, bankal, baklain, etc. and whatever. i tried it like 20 times but i just didn't get baikal =(
If you are using maximum annual area, then Tonle Sap in Cambodia (16,000 sq km) qualifies. It varies annually between this size in November (end of the wet season) and 2700 sq km in April (end of the dry season).
I cheated as much as to check what the name of Lake Onega was in English. Believe it or not, we call it Ääninen, which doesn't really sound a lot like Onega.
That second bullet point in the quiz description is an odd one... "but not Lake Maracaibo". Wouldn't it be better to state the reason Lake Maracaibo isn't included, instead of just randomly excluding it? I'm assuming it has something to do with the fact that it's tidally influenced?
Another item that might bear further review is the inclusion of sub-glacial Lake Vostok. While it has been proven that there is water down there, it's also covered by 13,000 feet of ice which will never melt. Well, that is to say, if it DID melt, then we'd have a hell of a lot bigger problems than ranking lake sizes, because there'd be an ocean in most of our backyards.
Incidentally, if water located permanently beneath a hard surface is to be included, then Salar de Uyuni in South America should be on there. Below a salt crust surface is a 10,582 sq. km pool of brine.
Please accept Nyasa and Niassa as alternatives for Malawi. It is called those by Tanzania and Mozambique respectively. Former claims part of lake - latter unquestionably owns part. And Nyasa is what all British school kids were taught in my (ancient) generation!
I haven't been there since '94, but at that point, Malawians had appeared to be well over the British Empire and were using their own name for their lake.
Despite its name the Caspian Sea is often regarded as the world's largest lake, but it contains an oceanic basin (contiguous with the world ocean until 11 million years ago) rather than being entirely over continental crust
Tanzania was actually derived partly from Tanganyika. "Tan" is from Tanganyika (the old name for the mainland part of Tanzania) and "Zan" is from Zanzibar, which Tanganyika merged with. "Ia" is the suffix, probably because "Tanzan" by itself sounds a bit weird. I don't think Tanzania should be accepted.
I think you need to include a note about seasonal lakes not being included in the quiz. Lake Eyre (max area 9,500km2) and Lake Torrens (max area 5,745km2) are large enough to make in onto this list but rarely have water in them because they are both in Outback Australia.
Re: my earlier post - ignore Lake Torrens I was looking at the wrong page when I included it in the comment. Lake Eyre is definitely large enough to be included.
I had no idea that someone actually went out to these desolate lakes in Canada (Athabaska, Great Bear, Great Slave,) and actually measured them, shows what kind of civil service we had umpteen years ago.
Surface area for Caspian sea seems a bit (well, about 60,000 sq km) bigger than it is in reality. That figure is more in line with surface area of the Black sea.
If you’re going to not allow Maracaibo as a lake because it’s connected to the sea, you should consider Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to be the same lake because they are connected on flat water.
I have no idea why Wikipedia added that to their list since the permanent open water area is only 3000 square kilometers. No doubt it will be removed eventually.
Got all the ones outside North America, but missed Winnipeg, Nicaragua, and Athabasca. Probably would have got Nicaragua if I'd thought about it longer, but my head was stuck in Canada (which still didn't help with the other two). Not many people got it, but Lake Vostok is quite fascinating - it has been trapped beneath kilometres of ice for millions of years, and thus the life in it has evolved independently of life elsewhere. Of course it's very hard to access and there are concerns of contamination with any access, but it also offers some parallels to missions to icy moons like Europa.
The determination of the Caspian Sea as a lake or a sea is in dispute and under negotiation between the 5 littoral states bordering it. A previous agreement between the Soviet Union and Iran listed it as a lake but since the break-up of the USSR the new littoral nations have refused to acknoweldge the previous treaty. If the Caspian were a lake the resources (oil, gas, fishing) and area would be split evenly between the five but if it is a sea the borders would be drawn out from the borders of each nation which would mean Iran would have considerably less territory under their control. There are other concerns but this is the primary issue.
Incidentally, if water located permanently beneath a hard surface is to be included, then Salar de Uyuni in South America should be on there. Below a salt crust surface is a 10,582 sq. km pool of brine.