The Lake
Trasimeno is shallow, muddy, rich in fish, including pike, carp, and tench. It is 4 m deep on average. Lake Trasimeno is an endorheic body of water; it is an impounded lake that receives water but has no outlet. Other endorheic bodies of water include the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Utah's Great Salt Lake, and the Dead Sea. Evaporation can lead to a build up of minerals in the water, resulting in a saline conditions, making these lakes sensitive to pressures from pollution.
The shallow waters meant that malarial mosquitoes prospered. To combat malaria, some mosquito larvae-eating fish were imported from USA during the 1950s. These fish are widely scattered, and some live in the lakes near Trasimeno. Although billions of larvae are eaten, there are still many mosquitoes and other insects.
Trasimeno water quality is still very good, as a misuration of Italia Nostra showed in 2005. The lack of large farms in the area and a small population means a low pollution level.
A proposal to drain the lake to solve the problems of malaria and depth changes was rejected. At the end of the 19th century, the level changes were solved by building a channel near San Feliciano. This also lessened the malaria problem.
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Famous quotes containing the word lake:
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)