Lake Ober-See

BW

The upper lake ( in the English literature also Lake Upper Lake ) is a year-round frozen lake in East Antarctica.

Location

The lake is located at the northern edge of the Otto -von- Gruber Mountains in central Queen Maud Land. The southern lake shore is occupied by a glacier slope, which gradually rises to 1100 meters and further united in the southeast with the Musketov Glacier. To the west of the lake is limited by ice-free northern foothills of the Otto -von- Gruber Mountains, in the east it is dominated by the 1300 meter high Seekopf. In the north of Anuchin glacier limits the valley of the upper lake, its melt waters feed the lake.

Description

The lake extends about 2.7 km in the north-south direction and is up to 2.6 km wide. The biggest measured depth is 55.3 meters. It is permanently covered with ice, which has an average thickness of 3 meters in the summer. In the Antarctic summer, the lake has the lateral moraine of the glacier Anuchin a drain on the submarine. The salt content is 55 milligrams per liter. Despite the conclusion of the outside world exist on lake bottom mats of cyanobacteria and green algae.

History

The lake was discovered during survey flights of the German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39, under the direction of Alfred Ritscher and documented with the aid of aerial photographs. On the basis of color differences of the ice and the unusually smooth ice surface was closed by Otto von Gruber, that it is a frozen only on the surface, but underneath liquid water body. The first sled expedition which reached the upper lake and the nearby submarine in January / February 1969, was part of the 14th Soviet Antarctic Expedition.