High in the Andes, Lake Titicaca’s water levels fall to historic lows

  • August 17, 2023
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: DPN Topics
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High in the Andes, Lake Titicaca’s water levels fall to historic lows

Subject: IR

Section: Places in news

Context:

  • The waters of Lake Titicaca are within 10 inches (25 centimeters) of their all-time low, a record set in 1996.

Details:

  • At its highest point in 1986, water levels reached 12 feet higher than they are today, topping out at 12,504.2 feet (3,811 meters) above sea level. But in 1996, they had fallen to 12,491.4 feet above sea level.
  • Falling water levels are “the result of climate change” and the outlook is not good.
  • El-Nino and La-Nina events have a major impact on the water level of lake Titicaca.

Lake Titicaca:

  • Lake Titicaca is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru.
  • It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By both volume of water and by surface area, it is the largest lake in South America.
  • It is the highest of the world’s large lakes and is one of the largest in South America, after Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo (which is actually connected to the Caribbean Sea) and Brazil’s Lagoa dos Patos, a coastal lagoon.
  • The lake is located at the northern end of the endorheic Altiplano basin high in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia.
  • The western part of the lake lies within the Puno Region of Peru, and the eastern side is located in the Bolivian La Paz Department.
  • Five major river systems feed into Lake Titicaca. In order of their relative flow volumes these are Ramis, Coata, Ilave, Huancané, and Suchez.
  • More than 20 other smaller streams empty into Titicaca.
  • The lake has 41 islands, some of which are densely populated.

Other important lakes:

LakesDescription
Lake Baikal
  • Located in Siberia, Russia.
  • The deepest lake in the world [1,637 metres deep]
  • It is the world’s largest lake by volume.
  • It is the second longest.
Lake Tanganyika
  • The longest lake in the world. [660 kilometres long]
  • It is also the second largest by volume.
  • It is the second deepest lake in the world, after lake Baikal.
World’s highest and lowest lakes
  • The world’s highest lake, if size is not a criterion, may be the crater lake of Ojos del Salado, at 6,390 metres. It is in Andes.
  • The highest large lake in the world is the Pumoyong Tso (Pumuoyong Tso), in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. [5,018 metres above sea level]
  • The world’s highest commercially navigable lake is Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia border at 3,812 m. It is also the largest lake in South America.
  • The world’s lowest lake is the Dead Sea, bordering Israel and Jordan at 418 metres below sea level. It is also one of the lakes with highest salt concentration.
Largest lake by continents
  • Australia – Lake Eyre (salt lake)
  • Africa – Lake Victoria, also the third-largest freshwater lake on Earth. It is one of the Great Lakes of Africa.
  • Antarctica – Lake Vostok (subglacial)
  • Asia – Lake Baikal (if the Caspian Sea is considered a lake, it is the largest in Eurasia, but is divided between the two geographic continents)
  • Europe – Lake Ladoga, followed by Lake Onega, both located in northwestern Russia.
  • North America – Lake Superior.
  • South America – Lake Titicaca
Aral Sea
  • It was a lake lying between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan, in the south.
  • Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.
Caspian Sea
  • The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water, often described as the world’s largest lake or a full-fledged sea.
  • It lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau of West Asia.
  •  It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the southwest, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southeast.

Andes mountain Range:

  • The Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America.
  • The range is 8,900 km (5,530 mi) long, 200 to 700 km (124 to 435 mi) wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S latitude), and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft).
  • The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
  • Geology:
    • The Andes are a Mesozoic–Tertiary orogenic belt of mountains along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a zone of volcanic activity that encompasses the Pacific rim of the Americas as well as the Asia-Pacific region.
    • The Andes are the result of tectonic plate processes, caused by the subduction of oceanic crust beneath the South American Plate as the Nazca Plate and South American Plate converge.

IR Lake Titicaca's water levels fall to historic lows