Lake Baykal

   Located in southern Siberia, Lake Baykal is the world’s oldest, deepest, and largest freshwater lake by volume. The 600-kilometer-long and 1,740-meter-deep lake is shared by Buryatiya on its eastern shore and Irkutsk Oblast on its western shore; it has a surface area of 31,500 square kilometers. A body of water with religious significance to the indigenous Buryats, the lake also attracts visitors from around the world. Known as the “Galapagos of Russia,” Lake Baykal is home to a wide variety of species unique to its ecosystem (including the Baykal Seal), and was declared a UNESCO Heritage Site in 1996. In the early decades of the TransSiberian Railway, cargo and passengers were off-loaded and transported via ferry or, during winter, on sleds across the lake; later rail lines circumvented the lake altogether. International concerns about pollution and waste from nuclear energy have been raised in the past decade, given the fact that the lake possesses 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater reserves.