International Waters learning Exchange & Resource Network

Poster: Development of WORLDLAKE – global database for widee limnological studies

Ryanzhin Sergey Institute of Limnology, Russian Academy of Sciences WORLDLAKE, global database, natural lakes, manmade lakes Global database, abbreviated as WORLDLAKE, was developed over past ten years for wide limnological studies (Ryanzhin, Straskraba 1999; Ryanzhin, Ulyanova Ryanzhin et al. 2001). WORLLAKE comprises vast geographical, morphometrical, hydrological, thermal, climatologic, limnological etc. literature data for “limnologically studied” lakes of the world, i.e. lakes where any limnological studies have been ever carried out. At present the database contains vast data on more than 51,000 natural (glacial, tectonic, volcanic, karst etc.) and 8,100 manmade (river dam lakes, excavated ponds, mining lakes etc.) lakes located in more than 150 countries, as well as more than 5,600 references. By continents and countries these data are distributed as following. Natural lakes: Europe (20,700 lakes), Asia (15,190), North America (11,870), Australia and Oceania (1,200), South America (1,080), Africa (700), Antarctic (230), Russia (9,821), USA (6,744), Canada (4,829), Kazakhstan (3,378), China (3,009), Poland (2,998), Germany (1,887) etc. Manmade lakes: Europe (4,093 lakes), North America (1,690), Asia (1,417), South America (585), Africa (351), Australia and Oceania (291), USA (1,399), Belarus (1,306), Russia (793), Germany (612), India (530), Brazil (450), Australia (243), Spain (221) etc. Currently, WORLDLAKE encompasses approx. 270 Mb. WORLDLAKE is presently enlarging and improving through new published and early not accessible data. Data from WORLDLAKE were previously analysed. The first results derived from the data accumulated in WORLDLAKE are global power statistical function of distribution of natural lake surface area distribution, and estimates of total lake surface are (2,7 ml sq.km) and volume (179,6 thousand km2) (Ryanzhin 2005, 2006). Currently, among others, we are going to calculate global statistics for morphometrical features of world lakes.

01 jan. 2016

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Poster: Development of WORLDLAKE – global database for widee limnological studies .docx