History, Industry, and Future Challenges

It is the deepest freshwater lake in the world, the oldest lake in the world, and it holds more freshwater than all five of the greatreat Lakes combined Hidden in Siberia, Lake B Call is a place where geology, evolution, history, and myth all come together It has its own seal species, its own unique ecosystem, and a story that stretches back millions of years Learn more about Lake By Call, one of the greatest natural wonders on Earth. On this episode? of everything everywhere daily This episode is sponsored by MintMobile. There are things in life that you do not want to be transparent, like your swimsuit or your search history. But when it comes to your wireless bill, transparency is everything. That's why MintMobile's wireless plans have no gimmicks and no gches. J high speed data and reliable coverage on the TMobile five G network. All plans are fifteen dollars a month, even the unlimited plan. 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That's QuInCE dot com slash daily for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Qince. com slash daily Lake B Call holds a set of distinctions that are unmatched by any other body of fresh waterater on planet Earth. It is simultaneously the world's oldest lake, its deepest, and by volume, the world's largest reservoir of unfrozen freshwater. Lake Mikal lies in southeastern Siberia in Russia, north of Mongolia near the city of Irkutsk It's long, narrow and crescent shape stretching roughly northeast to southwest It's about six hundred and forty kilometers or four hundred miles long, but only a few dozen kilometers wide in many places The lake is surrounded by mountains, including the Baikal mountains to the northwest and the Bargusin range to the east These mountains give by call its dramatic appearance. Steep shorelines, deep blue water, and rocky capes that extend into the lake One interesting fact about the lake is that it has hundreds of inflowing rivers and streams, but only one that goes out. The Angara River which flows west from the lake towards the city of Yrkutsk and eventually joins the Yenese River systemy on its way to the Arctic Ocean That fact alone makes Baiall's hydrology important, as it isn't just a scenic body of water It's a major node in the freshwater system for all of Northern Asia In the winter, Lake by Cal freezes over, often forming exceptionally clear ice In the summer, its vast mass of water keeps the surrounding shores cooler than the inland areas The Lake seasonal ice cover isn't just picturesque central to its entire ecology, affecting light algae, oxygen, circulation, and the timing of life cycles in the water Lake by call exists because Asia is slowly tearing itself apart at that location. It lies within the Bical Rift zone, one of the world's most important active continental rift systems In most lakes, time works against them becoming any deeper. Sediment fills basins, rivers and streams, reducing water levels, and lakes eventually shrink or disappear B call has survived because tectonic forces keep deepening and renewing its basin The rift began forming tens of millions of years ago when the crust stretched apart, creating a long trough Water filled the depression, rivers carried sediment into it, and the lake evolved into the enormous basin that we see today Seismic studies show that lake by call contains several miles of sediment at the bottom of the lake which accumulated over millions of years Researchers have identified deposits that are roughly two to four and a half miles thick Because of the rift, Baickal is less an ordinary lake and more like an embryonic ocean basin, although it's not certain that it will ever actually become one. Its formation is very similar to the creation of the African Rift Lakes, which I covered in a previous episode The rift is still active. Earthquakes occur in the region, hot springs are found around the lake, and the surrounding landscape continues to be shaped by faulting and uplifting What really sets Bicall apart from every other lake in the world is its volume and depth Both of which are a result of the rift The lake reaches a maximum depth of roughly one thousand six hundred and forty two meters or about five thousand three hundred and eighty seven feet, making it the deepest lake in the world by a wide margin. The depth of the lake doesn't include the miles of sediment that extend below its bottom Because it holds roughly twenty three thousand six hundred cubic kilometers of water BCal contains approximately twenty percent of all the unfrozen freshwater on planet Earth More than all five of North America's Great Lakes combined despite having a surface area smaller than that of just likeake Michigan. B callall's depth also gives it unusual circulation patterns Deep lakes can become stratified with upper and lower waters, mixing only under certain conditions. Yet by calls waters are oxygenated to remarkable depths compared to that of many other deep lakes This supports life far below the surface and helps explain the lake's unusual biological richness My call is sometimes called the Galapagos of Russia because of its age, isolation, and endemic species A very large number of Baickals, plants, and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. Its most famous animal is the bical seal, or NRpa the only exclusively freshwater seal species in the world. How seEALals reach Lake by call remains debated, but the most likely explanation involves ancient connections through Arctic river systems followed by isolation and adaptation The lake is also home to the Omle. a white fish that has historically been central to local diets and commerce Its invertebrate life is even more remarkable Mic call has an extraordinary diversity of amplipods, sponges, molluss, worms, and microscopic organisms Many of these species are highly specialized, adapted to cold clear oxygen rich water to ecological niches that don't exist in younger shallower lakes The lake's biodiversity is not just a catalog of strange species It's a living experiment in evolution Because by call is so old, lineages have had time to diversify inside the lake itself The human presence around Lake Baial reaches back for many thousands of years, with archaeological evidence of hunter gatherer populations along its shores extending into the upper Paleolithic Over subsequent millennia, the region has become home to various Turkic, Mongolic, and Tunongusic speaking peoples By the time of Russian Eastward expansion in the seventeenth century, the dominant indigenous group in the region was the Buryatts. A Mongolic people who developed a rich shamanistic and later Tibetan Buddhist influence religious tradition, in which Baikal itself occupied a sacred place Russian Cossack explorers reached the lake in the sixteen forties as part of the broader Russian conquest and colonization of Siberia and Lake by call was gradually incorporated into the expanding Russian empire over the following decades Its remoteness made it a natural site for sending people into exile From the eighteenth through the nineteenth and even into the twentieth centuries, the Siberian region surrounding Baikal became a destination for political prisoners and exiles including the Decembrists after the failed eighteen twenty five uprising and numerous later revolutionaries giving the lake and its surrounding Tiga an association with punishment and isolation in the Russian cultural imagination Scientific investigation of the lake accelerated in the nineteenth century, particularly under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences and later Soviet scientific institutions culminating in the establishment of dedicated special lake by call research bodies in the twentieth century. Lake By Call played a major role in one of the largest infrastructure projects in world history transr Siberian railway. In the late nineteenth century, Russia sought to connect European Russia with the Pacific The railway was meant to supply, populate, and integrate Siberia while moving raw materials and strengthening imperial control across the continent The trans Siberian, as part of a wider nineteenth century Russian rail expansion, was intended to supply and populate Siberia and deliver raw materials westward Lake by call posed a major engineering problem for the Tr Siberian railway. The railway could reach the lake's western and eastern shores, but the lake itself interrupted the line Before the circum by Call railway was completed, trains and passengers had to cross the lake by ferry In the winter, icebreakers ferried train cars across the lake to connect the two railroads. The Circum by Call Railway, built around the southern end of the lake in the early twentieth century was an extraordinary engineering achievement. It required tunnels, bridges, and retaining walls along steep rocky shorelines. It was the most technically difficult and expensive section of the Tr Siberian railroad. Later, the construction of the Irkutz hydroelectric station on the Inngara River changed the railway's role. Water levels rose, older sections were affected, and the main trans Siberian route had to be redirected The Circum by call line was eventually reduced to a dead end historic and tourist route rather than a main railroad artery During the Soviet pereriod, Baikal became an industrial site and subsequently one of the earliest and most prominent environmental controversies in Soviet history. Established in nineteen sixty six on the lake southern shore, the Bickolisk pulp and paper mill was built to manufacture a specific rate of cellulose initially intended for aircraft tire cord Its construction triggered sustained protests from Soviet scientists and authors, which was remarkable as there was almost no disscent inside the Soviet Union. Facing various economic and political pressures, the mill functioned intermittently until it was permanently closed in twenty thirteen Nevertheless, the toxic accumulation within its legacy waste lagoons continues to be an active concern Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the largest economic activity in the region has been tourism. Bikal is one of Russia's most famous natural destinations, drawing visitors to the shore of the lake Ol Kon Island, the Circum Bicol Railway, winter ice routes, hiking trails and lake cruises The region has attracted hotel investments and was declared a special economic zone in two thousand seven partially to encourage tourism development Tourism can create many jobs, but it also creates pressures from sewage, waste, illegal construction, and poorly regulated operators Recent studies have warned that mass tourism around by call can damage the very environment that makes the lake economically valuable as a tourist attraction Fishing is another traditional economic use, especially the catch of Omul, the lake's famous whitefish Fishing is cultural and commercial importance for lakeside communities, but it's not the dominant industry anymore In economic terms, by call's fishery is less important because of its scale than because it's a local food source Perhaps the most important proposal floated for the lake's future concerns its vast freshwater reserves The most realistic proposals have involved bottling baical water and selling it, especially to China. And this isn't a fantasy. Several companies have tried to market lake by call water as a premium natural product. And the idea has obvious commercial appeal. pure Siberian water from the world's deepest lake can be a pretty powerful brand The most controversial example came in twenty nineteen when a Chinese funded bottling plant near the village of Kultuk on the southern shore of Lake Baikal became the focus of public outrage A more dramatic idea is a pipeline from lake by C to Northern or Northwestern China China has a chronic water problem, especially in the north and northwest, where agriculture, industry, cities, and desertification all put pressure on water supplies. One of the most widely reported proposals appeared around twenty seventeen when planners in Lanzhao, China floated the idea of pumping water from Lake by Cal to relieve shortages. Reports describbe possible routes of one to two thousand kilometers with water being pumped uphill across extremely difficult terrain The odds of this happening are very, very slim for obvious geopolitical and engineering reasons. Russia will probably never allow water to be pumped out of the lake, regardless of how much water it holds Moreover, lowering the lake's water level would endanger many of the endemic species in and around the lake And the lake was listed as a UNESCA World Heritage site in nineteen ninety six, which gives it a protected status.