By mid-June 2009, the rare filling of this lake in Australia’s Simpson Desert appeared to have reached its peak.
Published Jun 21, 2009
The largest freshwater lake in Mongolia is known as the “sister” to Lake Baikal. Together they hold 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet.
Published Dec 18, 2017
Straddling Austria and Hungary, the lake is also known as the “Sea of the Viennese.”
Published Apr 10, 2017
In the desert, a lake shows a long fight between water, wind, and climate.
Published Feb 20, 2012
Sitting atop the Andes plateau on the border between Peru and Bolivia, the lake is the highest major body of navigable water in the world and the largest lake in South America.
Published Nov 23, 2015
Long and short. Deep and shallow. Salty and fresh. Blue and brown. These are Africa’s Lake Tanganyika and Lake Rukwa.
Published Jun 20, 2019
Roughly the same size of Belgium, Canada’s Great Slave Lake runs nearly 2,000 feet deep.
Published May 24, 2019
Located on the border of Russia and China, Lake Khanka plays an important role in supporting biodiversity in the region.
Published Jun 10, 2019
Floodwaters have worked their way through a series of parched channels, watering holes, and lagoons to start filling the iconic Australian lake.
Published May 28, 2019
The Great Salt Lake of northern Utah is a remnant of glacial Lake Bonneville that extended over much of present-day western Utah and into the neighboring states of Nevada and Idaho approximately 32,000 to 14,000 years ago. The north arm of the lake, displayed in this astronaut photograph from April 30, 2007, typically has twice the salinity of the rest of the lake due to impoundment of water by a railroad causeway that crosses the lake from east to west. The causeway restricts water flow, and the separation has led to a striking division in the types of algae and bacteria found in the north and south arms of the lake.
Published Jul 16, 2007
If Lake Natron, in Africa’s Great Rift Valley, had a color theme, it would be pink. The alkali salt crust on the surface of the lake is often colored red or pink by the salt-loving microorganisms that live there. Also, the lake is the only breeding area for the 2.5 million Lesser Flamingoes that live in the valley. These flamingoes flock along saline lakes in the region, where they feed on Spirulina, a blue-green algae with red pigments. This mosaic of photographs of the southern portion of Lake Natron shows the largest open lagoon area, and island mud flat, and a large area of pink salt crust. The colors show the actual colors viewed by the astronauts. Each time the lake is photographed, there are differences in the pattern of its salt crust, and the red colors of the blue-green algae and bacteria on the surface of the crust.
Published Apr 10, 2006
This lake in northwest Russia is small compared to Lake Baikal, yet it still manages to make a stately appearance in satellite imagery.
Published Apr 4, 2020
The lake is mostly inhospitable to life, except for a few species adapted to its warm, salty, and alkaline water.
Published May 8, 2017
Astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle and Space Station have tracked regional environmental changes spanning decades. Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake, serves as one example of an area experiencing significant changes that have been well documented from space. Over the past twenty years, the lake’s water levels have decreased in conjunction with increasing development from the fast-growing city of Guadalajara.
Published Aug 30, 2004
The usually dry, inland lake in Australia came alive with color after flood waters arrived in the late summer of 2017.
Published Feb 27, 2017
Like this lake in northwestern Nevada, many of the world’s prominent salt lakes are drying up.
Published Apr 4, 2018
Lake Titicaca, at an elevation of 12,507 feet (3,812 meters) in the Andean Altiplano, is the highest large lake in the world. More than 120 miles long and 50 miles wide, it was the center of the Incan civilization, and today straddles the boundary between Peru and Bolivia.
Published Dec 22, 2003
Spanning 17,000 square kilometers, Lake Balkhash is the largest lake in Central Asia and fifteenth-largest in the world.
Published Nov 4, 2017
Satellite data suggests this Russian salt lake is getting brighter due to the installation of check dams.
Published Dec 3, 2014
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