- Who
- Lake Baikal
- What
- 23,615.390 cubic kilometre(s)
- Where
- Russian Federation ()
- When
- 1999
The freshwater lake with the greatest volume is Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia, with an estimated volume of 23,615.390 cubic kilometres (5,665.63 cubic miles). Located in a geological rift valley in south-eastern Siberia, Lake Baikal is 636 kilometres (395 miles) long, with an average width of only 48 kilometres(30 miles). Soundings taken from the lake's Central Basin revealed it to be 1,642 metres (5,387 feet) deep, also making it the world's deepest lake.
The lake has an area of 31,722 square kilometres (12,247 square miles).
Baikal's depth and volume are based on the findings of a bottom-relief survey carried out by Navy Hydrographic Survey expeditions in 1979–87, which were compiled into bathymetric maps in 1992. This data was digitized, corrected and updated with material from other surveys in 1999. Funding for the project was provided by INTAS (International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union).
The revised depth and volume of Lake Baikal were published in the report "Computer-based Bathymetric Map of Lake Baikal", which appeared in Doklady Earth Sciences, vol. 408, issue 1, in May 2006. The authors of the report are P P Sherstyankin, S P Alekseev, A M Abramov, K G Stavrov, M De Batist, R His, M Canals and J L Casamor.
