Total lake water resources of the planet

well known (Rudolf, Winnipeg, Nicoragua, Van, Venern, Athabasca, Edward, Dead Sea, Balkhash Alberta, Chad, Tana, Geneva, Sevan, Zaysan), contain 1.9 x 103 km3 of water. Small lakes contain much less water. The total amount of water in the small and smallest lakes is trifling despite the fact that they are so abundant and so large in area. This paper is an attempt to evaluate approximately the amounts of water using the data on Euras ia, and then to give an approximate evaluation for the lake water resources on the Earth as a whole. The total lake area of the Earth amounts to 2.7 x 106 km2; the 19 largest lakes account for about 1 X 106 km2, and all the other several millions of lakes for the remaining 1.7 x 106 km2. Excluding the 6 largest lakes (Caspian, T A B L E 1