Usuario:Serapio~eswiki/Lago Baikal

Lago Baikal (Ruso: О́зеро Байка́л (Ozero Baykal)), un lago en el sur de Siberia, Rusia, entre Irkutsk Oblast en el noroeste y Buryatia en el sureste, cerca de Itkutsk. A 636 km de largo, 80 km de ancho y 1734 m de profundo, es el más grande de los lagos de agua dulce en Asia, y el más profundo en todo el mundo. Se calcula que formó hace 25-30 millónes de años, siéndose uno de los lagos más antiguos de historia geológica. Entre lagos grandes de latitud alta, el Lago Baikal es el único que no ha tenido sus sedimentos fregados por glaciares continentales. Investigaciónes de los sedimentos hechas en los años 1990 proveen una relación detallada de variación climatica durante los 250.000 años pasados. Se anticipan prontas investigaciones más profundas. Si todo el sedimento fuera sacado del lago, sería 9 km de profundo.

The lake is completely surrounded by mountains, technically protected as a national park and contains 22 small islands, the largest, Olkhon, being 72 kilometers long. The lake is fed by some 300 inflowing rivers, the six main ones being Selenga, the source of some of Baikal's pollution, Chikoy, Khiloh, Uda, Barguzin and Upper Angara, and is drained through a single outlet, the Angara River.

The bottom of the lake is 1285 m below sea level and is the deepest continental rift on the earth. Its volume — 23,000 km³ — is approximately equal to the total volume of the 5 Great Lakes of North America, or to about 20% of the total fresh water on the earth.

Baikal is a young rift lake, the rift widens about 2 centimeters a year. The fault zone is seismically active: there are hot springs in the area and notable earthquakes every few years.

Few lakes compete with Lake Baikal in biotic diversity. As many as 852 species and 233 varieties of algae and 1550 species and varieties of animals inhabitate the lake; many of them are endemic species. The world-famous Baikal Seal (Phoca sibirica), the only mammal living in the lake, is found throughout the whole area of the lake.

Muted protest about the establishment of a wood pulp and cellulose plant at the south end of the lake, at Baikalsk, first planned in 1957, originated ecological awareness among educated Russians, though not among the Soviet bureaucracy. The plant still pours industrial effluent into Baikal's waters.

Very little was known about Lake Baikal until work began on the Trans-Siberian railway. The scenic loop encircling Lake Baikal required 200 bridges and 33 tunnels. At the same time (1896–1902) a large hydrogeographical expedition headed by F. Drizhenko produced the first detailed atlas of the contours of Baikal's depths.