Where to Find the Biggest Lake in the World
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If you want to visit the biggest lake in the world, you may need to make more than one trip. Many people assume the largest lake is Lake Superior, though it turns out there's more than one way to approach the question. Are you measuring by depth, volume, surface area — or maybe a combination of all three factors?
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If your determination is based on surface area, we head north to Lake Superior, where 10 percent of the earth's freshwater is contained. The largest of the Great Lakes of North America shares a border with Canada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, and it spans a grand total of 31,700 square miles.
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For reference, that's a larger surface area than Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. Massive waves have even been recorded rolling across the surface of Lake Superior, though its main attraction is fishing. Travelers often come here for the smallmouth bass, salmon, trout, whitefish, herring, and northern pike — there's always something biting year-round.
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Of course, "biggest lake" could also mean deepest. In that case, we make our way to far-off southern Russia, where lies Lake Baikal. Here, the icy waters plunge more than 5,000 feet down into the earth. It's also hailed as the largest freshwater lake in terms of volume. Baikal is so deep and voluminous because of its unique location within an active continental rift zone, which causes the depth to reach almost 4,000 feet below sea level. As much as 22 percent of all the Earth's freshwater is reserved in this Siberian lake. When it comes to superlatives, Lake Baikal is also one of the clearest freshwater lakes on the planet.
Want to learn more about the biggest things in the world? Find out about the world's largest aquarium — the location may surprise you — and the tallest mountain.
