20 Famous Lakes That Are Going Dry

The water of Penuelas Lake could once fill 38,000 Olympic swimming pools; now it has almost entirely dried up. This has led to water shortages in Valparaiso and other Chilean towns in the region. Experts blame the drought that is starving the lake – the longest-lasting in at least 400 years – on greenhouse gasses that are thinning the ozone layer over Antarctica. This reduces the number of storms along the coast of Chile. Elevated temperatures mean snow in the Andes, key for creating meltwater, melts faster, or turns to vapor before it reaches the lake.

Walker Lake is a natural lake fed by the Walker River, though it has no outlet. Since the middle 1800s, water from the Walker River and its tributaries has been diverted for agriculture, causing the level of the lake to plummet by 180 feet since 1882, when such measurements began. The Walker Basin Conservancy, a nonprofit organization trying to restore the lake to healthy levels, calls the lake’s decline “an ecological tragedy more than a century in the making.” Increasing salinity in the lake is why wildlife such as loons no longer visit it.

A study published by Earth and Planetary Science Letters in 2019 said Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, could dry up more quickly than researchers previously realized, and that the White Nile tributary – the only outlet for Lake Victoria – could vanish within a decade. The water level of Lake Victoria has fallen almost five feet since 1998, due to reduced rainfall and the effects of evaporation, exposing a narrow strip of land along the shore. The study determined that the recent drop in the water level has created additional breeding grounds for malaria vectors.

Lake Faguibine, lying at the end of a series of basins replenished by the Niger River when it floods, has experienced widely fluctuating water levels for decades. At its fullest, the lake was among the largest in West Africa; in 1974, it covered about 230 square miles. Since the Sahel drought of the 1970s and ’80s, though the lake has been dry most of the time, only occasionally filling partially with water.

Lake Titicaca, a freshwater lake between Peru and Bolivia, is perched atop the Andean Altiplano at over 12,000 feet in elevation. It is the largest lake in South America, with a surface area of over 3,200 square miles. Its water level has decreased since 2000 due to shortened rainy seasons and shrinking glaciers, reducing snowmelt water flows into the lake. It is also vulnerable to the evaporative effects of solar radiation, and is currently approaching all-time lows.