Comments on: How many lakes are there? https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/ Thu, 23 Oct 2014 04:53:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Matthew von der Ahe https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484037 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 04:53:16 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484037 Interesting! Makes me think several thoughts:
1. On other planets, could quantity of lakes be used as a proxy for past but “recent” glaciation?
2. Glaciers produce or supply the necessary ingredients for lakes: they erode and/or deposit earth materials to form enclosed basins; they expose bedrock or deposit silts and clays, both impermeable earth materials, to line the bottoms of the basins; and then they melt and leave fluid to fill the basins. All of those ingredients (basins, impermeable bottoms, and fluid) can be supplied by other processes, of course.
3. How are the the alkane lakes on Titan formed? I know the fluid seasonally rains from the atmosphere, and I think the impermeable lake bottoms are “bedrock” of water ice, but how are the basins formed? Bolide impacts?

Many questions. Nice post!

]]> By: Astrostevo https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484036 Tue, 21 Oct 2014 06:30:18 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484036 Yes indeed! Hard to say if that makes them playas here or not isn’t it! 😉

]]> By: Brainstorms https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484035 Mon, 20 Oct 2014 19:25:37 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484035 They be “virtual lakes”, mate!

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484034 Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:21:26 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484034 Astrostevo:

I was at a seminar, years ago, on freshwater lake coring and paleoclimatology, the speaker was Australian. He kept showing slides of the lakes he cored. One lake after another after another.

Finally someone in the seminar stopped him. “You keep using this word, ‘lake’, I don’t think it means what you think it means. Those are all dry fields of dust!”

Southern Africa is full of lakes that are not full of water!

]]> By: Astrostevo https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484033 Mon, 20 Oct 2014 08:21:52 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484033 See also :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwK-nNzOasQ

Apparently also a setting for Mad Max – which is something new I’ve just learnt about, oh, two minutes ago now!.

Plus there’s some good pictures of Lake Eyre also now known as Kati Thanda from space and otherwise on its wiki page here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Eyre

Plus there’s the awesome starkness of scenery and photographic enduro of Salt on lake Eyre / Kati Thanda to get a quick taste of here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyXGwB9B6bQ

One spectacular if slow doco – & a challenge to tell the salt from snow in some scenes.

PS. I gather Greg Laden there are similar(~ish?) salt pans in Africa incl. / alternatively of natron and extreme alkalinity? Turkana? With flamingos and awful caustic mud? Did you see anything like that there?

]]> By: Astrostevo https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484032 Mon, 20 Oct 2014 08:05:37 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484032 In Australia we have the added complication that a lot of our lakes are temporary -very temporary!

Are we counting salt lakes such as Lake Eyre, Lake Torrens, and Lake Cadibarrawirracanna.

No, really I didn’t make that one up -see :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cadibarrawirracanna

Our inland rivers tend to be awfully variable as the early European explorers often found to their cost and the salt pans / lakes fill only for a very short time at irregular intervals maybe only once or thrice every third decade or so.

Maps of Australia that have these lakes painted a lovely shade of blue are highly misleading and the counting of these is, well, rather problematic.

]]> By: dean https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484031 Sun, 19 Oct 2014 23:05:25 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484031 I get a “403 forbidden” error when I click on the link so can’t see the paper. Is there a simple (general?) guideline to distinguish between what qualifies as a lake and what we (here in Michigan) call a pond? Is that distinction not important?

]]> By: dave s https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484030 Sun, 19 Oct 2014 20:07:27 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484030 To simplify counting, there’s only one natural lake in Scotland, the Lake of Menteith. Of course there are [probably uncountable] lochs and lochans, which might have to be included.

]]> By: Frosty https://gregladen.com/blog/2014/10/18/how-many-lakes-are-there/#comment-484029 Sun, 19 Oct 2014 06:47:53 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=20538#comment-484029 At very high latitudes there is also a permafrost layer which can be conducive to the formation of (numerous) thermokarst lakes. Permafrost also affects – prevents – surface drainage and thus promotes ponding of surface water. Look at Google Earth imagery of Alaska north of 68 degrees latitude. There are countless lakes.

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