Lakes and glaciers of South America


Lakes. There are not many big lakes in South America. The largest of them is Maracaibo in the north of the mainland. The basin of this lake has a tectonic origin and is located in the crust of the earth’s crust. The lake connects with a narrow strait with the Caribbean Sea, for which it is called a lake-lagoon.

Decoration of the Andes – the high-mountain lake Titicaca {Fig. 114). Its tectonic basin reaches a maximum depth of 304 m. It lies at an altitude of 3812 m, and the surface of the water surface is 8 thousand km2. At such a significant height of large lakes in the world, nowhere in the world. The name in the Inca language means “a rock of tin”, since on one of the lake islands the Indians in antiquity mined this metal. The chemical composition of the water is about. Titicaca is similar to the sea: it is brackish, but suitable for use. Even representatives of oceanic fauna live here, in particular some species of sharks. This suggests that in the past, the lake could have been a gulf of the ocean.

Glaciers. The snow line in the Andes lies at the highest altitudes in the world: 4500-6500 m. Only in the south it drops to 500 m. The mountains are high enough to reach the snow line, that is, to form glaciers. But because of the small amount of precipitation of glaciers in the Andes is slightly less than in other high mountains of the planet. Glaciers are covered only the highest points. The farther to the south, the more glaciers. There is much more precipitation here, so the glaciers are at a lower altitude.


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Lakes and glaciers of South America