Important Lakes of India

• A lake is a body of surface water enclosed by land. Rivers may feed it or drain it, so a lake can take water from a river or act as its source.
• Lakes occur in hills, plains, plateaus, rift zones and along coasts. India’s main groups are the glacial lakes of the Himalaya, the fault-guided lakes of Kashmir and Kumaon, the salt lakes of Rajasthan and the lagoons of both coasts.
• Their uses include drinking water, irrigation, navigation, water storage, livelihood through fishing, and an effect on local climate.

Types and Special Forms

Types of Lakes

• The main types of lakes can be classified on several bases:
  • By water: freshwater, brackish and saltwater lakes.
  • By origin: natural and artificial lakes.
  • Oxbow lake: formed by river deposits, where a meander is cut off.
  • Crater lake: a hollow of volcanic activity or meteorite impact that fills with water. Lonar is of the impact kind.

Subglacial Lakes

• A subglacial lake is liquid water lying between an ice sheet and the land beneath.
• It stays liquid because the ice above acts as an insulator, trapping geothermal heat from the crust.
• Lake Vostok is the largest of the Antarctic subglacial lakes, whose known number was put at almost 400 in older counts.
  • It lies at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia’s Vostok Station, under the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
  • The station stands 3,488 m above mean sea level.
  • A global inventory of 2022 catalogues 773 subglacial lakes, most of them in Antarctica.

Lakes of India

Key Facts

• Wular Lake, Jammu and Kashmir, is named the largest freshwater lake in India, and Chilika (Chilka) Lake, Odisha (Orissa), the largest saline water lake.
  • Chilika is about 70 km long and up to about 22 km wide, narrowing to about 7 km in the south-west.
  • It is the most heavily fished inland tract of the coast.
• Cholamu Lake, Sikkim, has long been listed as the highest lake in India.
• Vembanad Lake, Keralam (Kerala), is the longest lake. Kochi stands where it opens to the sea.
• Govind Ballabh Pant Sagar, behind the Rihand Dam, is the largest artificial lake in older lists. By storage, Indira Sagar on the Narmada is now the largest reservoir.
  • Older accounts rank Dhebar Lake (Jaisamand) in Udaipur district of Rajasthan next after it.
• Salt lakes of Rajasthan: the inland drainage east of the Thar holds Sambhar, Didwana, Degana, Kuchaman, Sargol and Khatu.
  • Sambhar lies about 65 km west of Jaipur at about 360 m, about 30 km long and 3–8 km wide, and it shrinks sharply in the dry season.
• Lagoons: the kayals of Keralam are shallow inlets parallel to the coast.
  • Pulicat, about 40 km north of Chennai, is barred from the sea by the Sriharikota sand spit.
  • Kolleru began as a shoreline lagoon. Growth of the Godavari–Krishna delta, about 35 km seaward, has since left it inland.
• Kashmir Valley itself was a Pleistocene lake, later filled with sediment. Naini Tal and Bhim Tal mark the Kumaon lake belt.
• Ramsar sites: India had 103 Ramsar sites as of 15 October 2026, when Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh and Sauj Jheel in Uttar Pradesh were added. The status marked below follows that list.

• On this map, “Chilka” is Chilika and “Hirakund” is Hirakud.

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

Assam and Arunachal Pradesh

Bihar

Gujarat

Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh

Himachal Pradesh

Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh

Karnataka

Keralam

Madhya Pradesh

Maharashtra

North-East: Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Sikkim

Odisha

Rajasthan

Tamil Nadu

Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal

Important Lakes of the World

Which Water Bodies Count as Lakes

• The world’s largest lakes are usually listed leaving out the Caspian Sea, which is too big for most such lists, though it is still a lake.
• The Black Sea is not a lake, because the Bosporus and Dardanelles connect it to the Mediterranean.
  • Many big rivers fall into it, so its surface salinity is about 17‰, half that of the ocean.
• The Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea are lakes.

Named Lakes

• Lake Baikal: a rift lake in southern Siberia, Russia, long and crescent-shaped.
  • It is the largest freshwater lake by volume, holding 22–23% of the world’s fresh surface water, and the oldest (25–30 million years) and deepest, at 1,642 m (5,387 ft).
  • It is seventh in the world by surface area. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1996.
  • The land to its east is Transbaikalia, and the loose region around it is Baikalia.
  • Baikal-GVD (Gigaton Volume Detector): one of the three largest neutrino detectors, with IceCube at the South Pole and ANTARES in the Mediterranean, launched by Russian scientists to trace these elusive particles and their sources.
• Lake Tanganyika: the longest lake in the world (660 km), and second in both volume and depth, after Baikal.
• Great Lakes of North America: interlinked freshwater lakes reaching the Atlantic through the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
  • West to east: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario. By size: Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario.
  • Lake Superior is the largest continental lake by area, and Lake Michigan the largest wholly in one country.
  • They are a major water corridor for bulk goods, through the Great Lakes Waterway.
• Dead Sea (Salt Sea): borders Jordan to the east, and Palestine and Israel to the west. Its surface and shores are Earth’s lowest land.
  • Older accounts give 423 m and 418 m below sea level. It stands at about 430 m and is still falling.
  • It is among the lakes with the highest salt concentration.
• Aral Sea: lay between Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. It has shrunk since the 1960s, after Soviet irrigation projects diverted its rivers.
• African Great Lakes: part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift, including Lake Victoria, the largest in Africa, and Lake Tanganyika.

World Records

• Highest: the crater lake of Ojos del Salado (6,390 m) in the Andes, if size is ignored. The highest large lake is Pumoyong Tso (5,018 m) in Tibet.
• Highest commercially navigable: Lake Titicaca (3,812 m), on the Peru–Bolivia border and the largest in South America.