Global Warming Affects Lake Baikal's Wildlife in Siberia

Baikal is a beautiful lake located in the southeaster part of Siberia. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, holding approximately 20 percent of the world's total surface fresh water. The bottom of the lake is 1,371 metres below sea level. Baikal is famous for unique clarity of its waters and diversity of flora and fauna. Despite its great depth, the lake's waters are well-mixed and well-oxygenated throughout the water column compared to the stratification that occurs in such bodies of water as Lake Tanganyika and the Black Sea. Like Lake Tanganyika in Africa, Lake Baikal was formed in an ancient rift valley. The word "Baikal" came from Turk language. Which originally means "wealthy lake".

Lake Baikal is home to a unique ecosystem, which supports a huge number of wildlife species found nowhere else in the world. Lake Baikal has more than 800 unique wildlife species, which the most notable is the fresh-water seal. Over 80% of animals are endemic. Epischura baikalensis is endemic to Lake Baikal and the dominating zooplankton species there: 80 to 90 percent of total biomass. In this lake there are more than 300 species of the most interesting amphipod crustaceans, various flat and round worms, lower crustaceans, insects, mollusks, and fish. Lake Baikal also has more than 1,000 species of aquatic flora, such as the algae, about 20 species of flowering plants. The lake's bays and lagoons, its sheltered coves, and the river deltas harbour such plants as cattail, thin reed, water buckwheat, hornwort, and sedge.

Today, the researchers report that surface waters in Lake Baikal are warming quickly, on average by about 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit every decade. Not only increases in water temperature, but also increases chlorophyl a (300 %) and an influential group of zooplankton grazers (335%). Global warming have important implications for nutrient cycling and food web dynamics.

The Baikal seal, locally called nerpa. Nerpa is closely dependent with the lake's ice conditions. Nerpa make their dens by ice hummocks.A den is a semi-oval snow nest, sometimes quite long (up to 5 m) and wide (up to 2,7 m), with its own peculiar microclimate protecting the pups from cold, wind and feathered predators. Lake Baikal is completely covered by ice for some 5 months of the year. The last twenty years has seen a tendency for this period to decrease. Thats why, Global warming become the other stress factor for the nerpa population.

We must stop global warming. But how? We can start to use renewable energy sources, such as wind power and solar power. It is important to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. Then, recycle our organic waste, As we know, Around 3% of the greenhouse gas emissions through the methane is released by decomposing bio-degradable waste. Plant a tree and conserve forest worldwide. Trees can reduce our air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%. A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. At least, make sure that our goverment has a stronger commitment to stop global warming.