Lake Khövsgöl

Lake Khövsgöl

Lake Khövsgöl

Lake Khövsgöl (Mongolian: Khövsgöl nuur, classic script: Köbsügül naɣur), also referred to as Khövsgöl dalai Khövsgöl ocean) or Dalai Eej ocean mother) is the second largest lake in Mongolia.

Lake Khövsgöl is located in the northwest of Mongolia near the border to Russia, at the foot of the eastern Sayan Mountains. It is 1,645 m above sea level, 136 km long and 262 m deep. It holds almost 70% of Mongolia's fresh water and 0.4% of all the fresh water in the world.

Its watershed is relatively small, and it only has small tributaries. It gets drained at the south end by the Egiin Gol, which connects to the Selenge and ultimately into Lake Baikal. In between, the water travels a distance of more than 1,000 km, and a height difference of 1,169 m, although the line-of-sight distance is only about 200 km. Its location in northern Mongolia helps form the southern border of the great Siberian taiga forest, of which the dominant tree is the Siberian Larch (Larix sibirica),

The lake is surrounded by several mountain ranges. The highest mountain is the Bürenkhaan / Mönkh Saridag (3,492 m), which has its peak north of the lake exactly on the Russian-Mongolian border. The surface of the lake freezes over completely in winter. The ice cover gets strong enough to carry heavy trucks, so that transport routes were installed on its surface as shortcuts to the normal roads. However, this practice is now forbidden, to prevent pollution of the lake from both oil leaks and trucks breaking through the ice. It is estimated that 30-40 cars have sunk into the lake over the years.

Lake Khövsgöl is one of seventeen ancient lakes worldwide more than 2 million years old and the most pristine (apart from Lake Vostok) and is the most significant drinking water reserve of Mongolia. Its water is potable without any treatment and offers good living conditions for many types of fish.

The Lake area is a National Park bigger than Yellowstone and strictly protected as a transition zone between Central Asian Steppe and Siberian Taiga. The lake is traditionally considered sacred in a land suffering from arid conditions where most lakes are salty.

The Park is home to a variety of wildlife such as ibex, argali, elk, wolf, wolverine, musk deer, brown bear, Siberian moose and sable.

The Hövsgöl (Khövsgöl) Long-term Ecological Research Site (LTERS) was established in 1997 and an extensive research program began soon thereafter. Now, part of an international network of long-term study sites, the Hövsgöl LTERS provides a stage for nurturing Mongolia's scientific and environmental infrastructures, studying climate change and developing sustainable responses to some of environmental challenges facing the lake and its watershed.

The name Khövsgöl is derived from the turkic words for "Blue Water Lake". Nuur is the Mongolian word for "lake". There are a number of different transcription variants, depending on whether the Cyrillic x is transliterated to "h" or "kh", or whether the o is transliterated to "ö", "o", or "u". Transcriptions from the name in the classical Mongolian script, like Hubsugul, Khubsugul etc. may also be seen.