Lake Ladoga

The largest lake in Europe

Lake Ladoga (Russian Ладожское Озеро / Ladoschskoje Ozero, Finnish Laatokka, formerly Nevajärvi ) is the largest lake in Europe. It is located in north-western Russia between the Leningrad region and the south of the present Republic of Karelia, near the border with Finland.

On the island of Valaam is also a renowned Russian Orthodox monastery.

Geography and Geology

Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake. Its water area is 17,700 km ², together with its more than 500 islands it comprises 18,135 km ². With 687 km ² the sum of the land areas of its islands exceeds the size of the water surface of Lake Constance. The lake extends in a north-south direction over almost 220 miles and measures at its widest point in the west-east direction 120 km; at a minimum it is about 80 km wide. The maximum depth of Lake Ladoga is 225 m, the average depth of the lake is about 52 m.

The lake is geologically very young. He was, like almost all lakes in northern Europe, through the ausschürfende activity of the glacial ice sheet. Only at the end of the Weichsel ice age formed about 15,000 years ago the lake basin with the re-melting of the glacier.

Lake Ladoga is above its outflow, the river Neva, with the Baltic Sea in connection. About the Svir, one of the main tributaries of the Ladogas, there is a connection to the Lake Onega. From there, one hand to the White Sea - Baltic Canal and the Northern Dvina consist of navigable waterways to the White Sea, on the other hand reveals itself through the channels of the Volga-Baltic waterway access to the Caspian and the Black Sea.

The catchment area of Lake Ladoga, which is frozen as of the end of November to early April, covers approximately 280,336 km ².

History

By the 13th century the lake was still called Newo, he was but then after it is situated on the south bank of its medieval trading town of Staraya Ladoga Lake Ladoga in renamed (see Old Ladoga ).

In 1809 came through the assignment of the hitherto associated with Sweden Finland and the northwestern part ( about half) of the lake to Russia, as part of the province of Finland. This part of the lake that had become finnish with the independence of Finland in 1918, came to the end of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War of 1940 through the Treaty of Moscow on the territory of the Soviet Union.

During the Second World War, the besieged Leningrad by the Germans was supplied across the frozen Lake Ladoga ( the so-called road of life ). South of the Sea found from 1942 to 1943 a total of three so-called Ladoga battles for the opening of the land route to Leningrad instead.

Fauna

In Phoca hispida lake ladogensis lives, a subspecies of the ringed seal (Phoca hispida ). She is one of two subspecies of the ringed seal, which live in fresh water.