Lakes disappearing virtually overnight

[Dover]

125 Large Northern Lakes Disappear
By Robert Roy Britt

LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 03 June 2005
02:31 pm ET

A new study finds 125 large lakes in the Arctic have vanished as temperatures rose over the past two decades. Many other lakes have shrunk.

The lakes once sat atop permanently frozen soil called permafrost. Other studies have shown permafrost is melting around the world, causing low-lying ground to slump and rock to fall from mountains.

"We think that climate warming is thawing the permafrost," said lead researcher Laurence Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's like pulling the plug out of a bathtub. There's nothing to prevent lake water from percolating through the soil to aquifers below."

Changes seem to come abruptly.

"From what we can tell from space, a lake is either just fine or it's gone," Smith said.

The sudden draining could alter entire continental ecosystems, affecting birds and other wildlife that depend on the waterways, Smith and his colleagues say. Migratory birds count on the lakes during summer to feed their young.

The research is reported today in the journal Science.

...cont'd

http://www.livescience.com/environment/050603_lakes_gone.html

___________________


BBC - Vanishing lake baffles Russians



There have long been rumours about the lake
Residents of a village in central Russia are trying to solve the mystery of a lake that disappeared overnight.
Russia's NTV channel showed a huge, muddy basin where the lake once was, in the village of Bolotnikovo.

"It looks like somebody has pulled the plug out of a gigantic bath," said the TV's correspondent, next to a deep debris-filled hole.

Local officials in Nizhny Novgorod region say the lake was probably sucked into an underground cave.

The name of the village - which lies about 250 km (155 miles) east of Moscow - roughly translates as "boggy".

The discovery was made by local fishermen when they arrived at the lake early in the morning.

"I looked and there was no water. I thought: Oh my God, what's going on?" one of them told the TV.
Rescuers were called out to search the uncovered lake bed to see if anybody could have been sucked under, but it is thought no-one was on the lake when the waters vanished...cont'd

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4566355.stm

[Zuni]

1. In the USSR, they turned the 4th largest inland sea

the Aral sea into a toxic swamp and salt flat in a few decades

[burrowowl]

2. I wonder what

God/Godess thinks about homo sapiens sapiens, how many sapiens can be added until sapiens itself realizes it is STUPID!

[Zuni]

3. Should be sapiens ignoramus

because humans are not only heavily into fucking over each other, we fuck over everything else too

[punpirate]

4. Everyone's gettng wake-up calls...

... but the US seems to be only one sleeping in.... *sigh*

[RedOak]

5. I'm no expert, but

I do know that a "lake" usually has a source, either runoff melt/water shed from rains, or a spring. Many lakes also have an outlet for excess water. From the description of the examples of the disappearing lakes, I would suspect they were just giant puddles, especially those known to have been over permafrost. Yes, they drained like a bathtub because the water finally found a gravitational route to an underground aquifer. And that water is not 'lost' or gone, it is now in the aquifer, available for future use or resurfacing.

These disappearing "lakes" were no part of "waterways"; they were simply giant puddles.

[architect359]

6. Sure but...

...how long have these puddles been there and how much of the surrounding environment was dependent on them? If they drained in a matter of days, that's going to be a shock to the ecosystem. Anyway, it does sound like this adds more evidence to an ongoing climate change.