Lake · Latvia
Lake Lubāns
Lake Lubāns is the largest lake in Latvia and lies in the east of the country. It is very shallow, and its size changes a lot: depending on the water level, it covers between about 25 and about 100 km².
Picture credit: Own Work. (Public domain) · BirdsEyeLV (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Kikos (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Lubāns?
Countries on its shores: Latvia.
Largest lake of: Latvia.
Middle of the lake: 56.77° N, 26.87° E
The story behind it
Lake Lubāns lies in the middle of a wide, low hollow in eastern Latvia. It is very shallow: the deepest spot is only about 3.5 metres deep, and on average the water is just 1.6 metres deep. The rivers Rēzekne and Malta bring water in, and the Aiviekste carries it away to the big Daugava River. Because the land is so flat, the lake used to flood huge areas: in the early 1900s the water once covered 650 km². After bad spring floods in 1926, people built dams and ditches, and between 1929 and 1939 they lowered the water level by several metres. In 1850 the lake covered almost 98 km², but in the mid-1970s only about 25 km². Today about 180 km² of old marshland around it has been drained for farming. The wetlands are an important place where rare birds raise their chicks, and 14 kinds of fish live in the lake. Since 1999 the area has been protected.
Find it on the globe
Lake Lubāns is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Lubāns?
Lake Lubāns usually covers about 80 km², which makes it the largest lake in Latvia. But its size changes a lot with the water level: from about 25 km² when the water is low to about 100 km² when it is high.
Why does Lake Lubāns change its size so much?
The lake is very shallow and lies in flat land, so a little more or less water spreads over a big area. People have also changed the water level with dams and ditches since the 1920s.
Which animals live at Lake Lubāns?
14 kinds of fish swim in the lake. The wetlands around it are an important place where rare birds build their nests and raise their young.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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