Where is Lake Ladoga located?
Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake in northwestern Russia, split between the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast, in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg. It drains into the Gulf of Finland through the Neva River.
Questions about Lake Ladoga
Short answers, pulled from the story.
How big is Lake Ladoga?
Lake Ladoga has an average surface area of 17,891 square kilometers, excluding islands, making it slightly larger than Kuwait. It runs 219 kilometers north to south, averages 83 kilometers wide, and reaches a maximum depth of 230 meters in its northwestern part.
Why is Lake Ladoga important in European geography?
Lake Ladoga is the largest lake located entirely in Europe. It is the second largest lake in Russia after Lake Baikal and the 14th largest lake by area in the world, comparable in size to Lake Ontario.
What was the Road of Life on Lake Ladoga?
The Road of Life was the supply route across Lake Ladoga during the Siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944. With a section of the eastern shore in Soviet hands, supplies reached the besieged city by trucks on winter ice roads and by boat in summer.
How did Lake Ladoga get its name?
The name Ladoga traces back through Old Norse forms Aldeigja or Aldoga, borrowed by the Slavic population and reshaped by an Old East Slavic metathesis into Ладога. According to T. N. Jackson, the name first referred to a river, then a city, and only then the lake, with origins in the Finnic Alodejoki, meaning river of the lowlands.
What wildlife lives in Lake Ladoga?
Lake Ladoga hosts 48 forms of fish, including roach, zander, European perch, an endemic variety of smelt, and the rare endangered Atlantic sturgeon. It also has its own endemic ringed seal subspecies, the Ladoga seal, and a population of Arctic char related to chars in southern Sweden.
How was Lake Ladoga formed geologically?
Lake Ladoga sits in a graben and syncline depression of Proterozoic age, shaped further by Pleistocene glaciations. It passed through freshwater and brackish stages of the Baltic, and the River Neva formed only when Ladoga's waters broke through the threshold at Porogi, dated to about 3,100 radiocarbon years before present.