How do lakes evolve over time?

The Life Cycle of Lakes All lakes, even the largest, slowly disappear as their basins fill with sediment and plant material. The natural aging of a lake happens very slowly, over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years. But with human influence, it can take only decades. A lake's plants and algae slowly die.



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The middle layer, the thermocline, mixes and turns over throughout the year. It turns over due to climate, nutrient variations, and geologic activity such as earthquakes. However, major lake turnover happens during the fall and spring, when the lake's cold and warm waters mix and readjust.

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Solution Lakes: Lakes can form when underground deposits of soluble rocks are dissolved by water running through the area, making a depression in the ground. Rock formations made of sodium chloride (salt), or calcium carbonate (limestone), are most likely to be dissolved by acidic waters.

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Over a very, very long time, the lake will accumulate sediment and move from being a young oligotrophic lake, to middle-aged and mesotrophic, to old and eutrophic, and finally the lake will 'die' once it has completely filled in.

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Lake aging is the natural process by which a lake fills in over geologic time with erosional materials carried in by tributary streams, with materials deposited directly from the atmosphere, and with materials produced within the lake itself.

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Lakes lifespans are limited, as rivers dump their sediment into them and dead plant material builds up on the lake bottom. Most lakes are less than 10,000 years old.

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Eutrophication is the natural aging of a lake by biological enrichment of its water. In a young lake the water being cold and clear does not support much life. But with time streams draining into the lake introduce nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which encourage the growth of aquatic organisms.

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For a lake to keep its water over time, it has to be replenished. There are both natural and man-made lakes. The main way that water gets into reservoirs and man-made lakes is from the rivers and streams that were dammed to create them.

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Exorheic, or open lakes drain into a river, or other body of water that ultimately drains into the ocean. Endorheic basins fall into the category of endorheic or closed lakes, wherein waters do not drain into the ocean, but are reduced by evaporation, and/or drain into the ground.

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If left alone, the pond or lake will eventually fill in completely, and become a swamp or wetland at best. Most existing farm ponds fall in the eutrophic category and need help quickly to slow the aging process.

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Located in Russia in the southern region of Siberia, Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake by both volume (22995 km3) and depth (1741m). Lake Baikal contains 20% of the world's fresh surface water. Lake Baikal hides its vast waters under a relatively small surface area (31500 km2).

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