Lake Ladoga

Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe, it covers an area of 17,600 sq km. The lake is the source of drinking water for the second largest city of Russia - Saint-Petersburg.

The lake is slightly elongated, its maximum length is more than 200 km, width - 130 km; its greatest depth is 260 m.

Nature worked millions of years on the artistic framing of Lake Ladoga. Its northern part lies on the Baltic crystalline shield, the formation of which dates from the most ancient eras of the Earth history. The necklace of islands, parted by a maze of channels (skerries), is stretched near the northern shore. Some of them bristled up with granite rocks, which are sheer going downward in cold depthes of waters. Others place their stone backs under waves. Small islands covered with trees show green in the depth of bays. Valaam archipelago with an ancient Valaam monastery is a constituent part of Ladoga skerries.

Lake Ladoga can literally be called a pantry of solar energy. The solar energy, penetrating into the water, sets water masses of the lake in motion. Even in short periods of calm, when the surface of Ladoga is mirror-like, there is both horizontal and vertical shift of water masses at a depth. This phenomenon contributes to redistribution of heat in Ladoga and to gradual heating of more deep layers. Accumulation of solar heat and its distribution in water within day and night, season and year determines temperature condition of the lake. Ladoga has its own spring, summer, autumn and winter.

There are 50 species of fishes in the lake. The most valuable ones are - salmon, white-fish, zander and umber. Perch and pike reach its maximum size here.