Pingualuit Crater

The Pingualuit Crater (French: cratère des Pingualuit; Inuktitut, "where the land rises"), formerly called Chubb Crater and later New Quebec Crater (cratère du Nouveau-Québec), is a young impact crater, by geological standards, located in the Ungava Peninsula of Quebec, Canada. It is 3.44 km (2.14 mi) in diameter, and is estimated to be 1.4 ± 0.1 million years old (Pleistocene).

The crater is exposed to the surface, rising 160 m (520 ft) above the surrounding tundra and is 400 m (1,300 ft) deep. A 252 m (827 ft) deep Pingualuk Lake fills the depression, and is one of the deepest lakes in North America. The lake also holds some of the purest fresh water in the world, with a salinity level of less than 3 ppm (the salinity level of the Great Lakes is 500 ppm). The lake has no inlets or apparent outlets, so the water accumulates solely from rain and snow and is only lost through evaporation. In terms of transparency, it is second only to Lake Mashū in Japan.