Karakul (Tajikistan)

Karakul
Karakul Location in Tajikistan
Location	Pamir Mountains
Coordinates	39°1′N 73°27′E / 39.017°N 73.450°E / 39.017; 73.450Coordinates: 39°1′N 73°27′E / 39.017°N 73.450°E / 39.017; 73.450
Type	impact crater lake, endorheic
Primary outflows	none
Basin countries	Tajikistan
Max. width	52 km (32 mi)
Surface area	380 km2 (150 sq mi)
Max. depth	230 m (750 ft)
Surface elevation	3,900 m (12,800 ft)

Karakul, Qarokul (Kyrgyz for "black lake", replacing the older Tajik name Siob) is a 25 km (16 mi) diameter lake within a 52 km (32 mi) impact crater. It is located in the Tajik National Park in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan.

Karakul lies within a circular depression interpreted as an impact crater with a rim diameter of 52 km (32 mi). The crater is relatively recent: its age is estimated variously as 25 Ma, less than 23 Ma, or probably from the Pliocene (5.3 to 2.6 Ma). The Earth Impact Database (EID) lists it as less than 5 Ma, or during the Pliocene. It is larger than the Eltanin impact, which has already been suggested as a contributor to the cooling and ice cap formation in the Northern Hemisphere during the Pliocene.

The Karakul impact structure was first identified through studies of imagery taken from space.

The lake was formerly known as Lake Victoria, named after Queen Victoria by the British cartographers/military geographers. It was marked as such by most maps of the area until the 1920s when a Kyrgyz name: Karakul, or the Black Lake, replaced the British name by the new Soviet cartographers.

The lake/crater lies at an elevation of 3,960 m (12,990 ft) above mean sea level. A peninsula projecting from the south shore and an island off the north shore divide the lake into two basins: a smaller, relatively shallow eastern one, between 13 to 19 m (43 to 62 ft) deep, and a larger western one, 221 to 230 m (725 to 755 ft) deep. It is endorheic (lacking a drainage outlet) and the water is brackish. There is a small village with the same name on the eastern shore of the lake.

Although the lake lies within a national park, much of the surroundings are used as pasture. The lake, with its islands, marshes, wet meadows, peat bogs, and pebbly and sandy plains, has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports significant numbers of the populations of various bird species, either as residents, or as breeding or passage migrants. These include bar-headed geese, ruddy shelducks, common mergansers, saker falcons, Himalayan vultures, lesser sand plovers, brown-headed gulls, Tibetan sandgrouse, yellow-billed choughs, white-tailed rubythroats, white-winged redstarts, white-winged snowfinches, rufous-streaked accentors, brown accentors, black-headed mountain-finches and Caucasian great rosefinches. The lake's islands are the main places where waterbirds rest and nest. The only fish in the lake is a species of stone loach.