Poyang Lake (Chinese: 鄱阳湖; pinyin: Póyáng Hú, Gan: Po-yong U), located in Jiangxi Province, was once the largest freshwater lake in China.
It once had a surface area of about 3,500 km², a volume of 25 km³ and an average depth of eight meters. As of 2012, due to drought and the practice of storing water at the Three Gorges Dam the size of the lake has been reduced to about 200 km². The lake provides a habitat for half a million migratory birds and is a favorite destination for birding. It is fed by the Gan, Xin, and Xiu rivers, which connect to the Yangtze through a channel.
During the winter, the lake becomes home to a large number of migrating Siberian cranes, up to 90% of which spend the winter there.
Read more about Poyang Lake: Formation, Environmental Issues, In History
Famous quotes containing the word lake:
“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)