Synonyms
Major lakes in Sweden
Definition
Sweden’s great lakes. The four largest lakes in Sweden with regard to surface area are, in order, Vänern, Vättern, Mälaren, and Hjälmaren. Vänern is the third largest lake in Europe after Ladoga and Onega in Russia, and Vättern is the 11th largest lake. On a global ranking, Vänern is the 33rd and Vättern the 78th largest lake in the world (Herdendorf, 1982).
Introduction
Sweden has close to 100,000 lakes, where a lake is defined as a water body with a surface area greater than 0.01 km2 (Lindkvist and Danielsson, 1987). Approximately 9% of the area of Sweden constitutes lakes, which corresponds to a total lake surface area of about 40,000 km2. In total, 22 lakes have a surface area of more than 100 km2, 358 lakes an area between 10 and 100 km2, and 3,990 an area between 1 and 10 km2. The ten largest lakes with regard to surface area, together with their volume and mean and maximum depths, are given in Table 1(the exact numbers can vary...
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Larson, M. (2012). Sweden’s Great Lakes. In: Bengtsson, L., Herschy, R.W., Fairbridge, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lakes and Reservoirs. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4410-6_269
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4410-6_269
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