What is the world's largest lake?

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Answer

The Caspian Sea (a salt lake) in Asia is the largest lake on Earth by both area and volume, with a surface area of 371,000 km² (143,000 mi²) and a volume of 78,200 km³ (18,800 mi³). It has a maximum depth of about 1025 meters (3,363 ft).
It is larger in all respects than the total of all five of the "Great Lakes" of North America.
There are two lakes deeper than the Caspian; Lake Baikal in Asia has a depth of 1,637 m (5,370 ft) and Lake Tanganyika in Africa has a depth of 1,470 m (4,800 ft).  

Fresh water lakes

-- Area --

The largest freshwater lake area is the Michigan-Huron basin in North America, which is geologically a single lake with an area of 117,702 km² (45,445 mi²). If they are considered 2 separate lakes, which they are politically but not scientifically.

-- Volume --

The largest freshwater lake volume is Lake Baikal in Asia at 23,600 km³ (5,700 mi³).

Lake Baikal is in southern Siberia in Russia, located between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, near the city of Irkutsk. It is also known as the "Blue Eye of Siberia". It also contains more water than all of the North American Great Lakes combined. At 1,637 meters (5,370 ft), Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world,and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. However, Lake Baikal contains less than one third the amount of water as the Caspian Sea, which is the largest lake in the world. Like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed in an ancient rift valley and therefore, is long and crescent-shaped with a surface area of (31,494 km2/12,160 sq mi), less than that of Lake Superior or Lake Victoria. Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. At more than 25 million years old, it is the oldest lake in the world.

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First answer by Kumar.p. Last edit by TheWiseFool. Contributor trust: 673 [recommend contributorrecommended]. Question popularity: 23 [recommend question].