Lake Hazen

Lake Hazen is a freshwater lake in the northern part of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, north of the Arctic Circle.
It is the largest lake north of the Arctic Circle by volume. By surface area it is third largest, after Lake Taymyr in Russia and Lake Inari in Finland.

The area around the lake is a thermal oasis within a polar desert, with summer temperatures up to .
The lake itself is covered by ice about ten months a year. It is fed by glaciers (most importantly Henrietta Nesmith and the Gilmour Glaciers) from the surrounding Eureka Uplands—Palaeozoic rocks north of the lake, rising up to above sea level—and drained by long Ruggles River, which flows into Chandler Fjord on the northern east coast of Ellesmere Land. The lake is flanked by the Arctic Cordillera.

The lake is long and up to wide, with an area of .Mark Nuttal: ''Encyclopedia of the Artctic''. Routledge, 2012, , S. 835-836 () It stretches in a southwest-northeast direction from to . The lake is up to deep and has an estimated volume of 51.4 km³.G. KÖCK, D. MUIR, F. YANG, X. WANG, C. TALBOT, N. GANTNER, D. MOSER
''Bathymetry and Sediment Geochemistry of Lake Hazen (Quttinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut)''
Arctic, Vol. 65, No. 1 (MARCH 2012), pp. 56-66
JSTOR
The shoreline is long and above sea level.
The lake has several islands, the largest of them being Johns Island, which is long and less than wide, also extending in a southwest-northeast direction like the lake itself. Other islands include Gatter Island, Clay Island (both close to the northeastern shore), Whisler Island, and Dyas Island (both close to the southern shore).

Lake Hazen is often called the northernmost lake of Canada, but detailed maps show several smaller lakes up to more than farther north on Canada's northernmost island. Turnabout Lake is immediately northeast of the northern end of Lake Hazen. Still further north are the Upper and Lower Lakes, with Upper Dumbell Lake southwest of Alert, Canada's northernmost settlement on the coast of Lincoln Sea, Arctic Ocean.

The northeastern end of Lake Hazen is southwest of Alert.

The lake is part of Quttinirpaaq National Park.

Artifacts of Thule civilization were discovered near Lake Hazen in 2004. Thule preceded the Inuit. In 1882, Adolphus Greely was the first European to discover the lake during his 1881–1883 expedition. Greely's base camp for the exploration was Fort Conger at the northeastern shore of Ellesmere Island, at , which was established as part of the first International Polar Year. Greely named the lake in honour of General William Babcock Hazen, who had organized the expedition. Camp Hazen was established on the northern shore of the lake in 1957 during the International Geophysical Year (IGY), and has been used by various scientific parties since then.

Lake Hazen is populated by two morphotypes of Arctic char, a larger and a smaller. Studies in the 1990s indicated neither char morphotype is anadromous, but Inuit traditional knowledge states otherwise.Douglas Clark, �
Assessing the Health of the Lake Hazen Ecosystem, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories
” Parks Canada, 1997. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2020-05-14. “Two morphotypes of Arctic char are present in Lake Hazen: a large, cannibalistic form, and a small, presumably benthic-feeding form (Reist et al. 1995). Taken together, the results of both radiotelemetry studies in 1995–6 (Babaluk et al. in prep.) and, more conclusively, strontium uptake by char (Halden et al. 1996) suggest that neither form is anadromous. However, this is in contradiction to Inuit traditional knowledge, which holds that the char in Lake Hazen do go to sea (Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve Advisory Board, March 5, 1997). A comprehensive demographic analysis of the char population of Lake Hazen is in progress (J. Reist, pers. comm.). Fecundity information is still required.”

Named Inflows

All named rivers and creeks are listed in a clockwise manner, starting in the south:

At the southwestern end (from south to north):
*Very River
*Adams River

On the northwest coast (from southwest to northeast):
*Turnstone River
*Henrietta River
*Ptarmigan Creek
*Blister Creek
*Skeleton Creek
*Snow Goose River
*Abbé River
*Cuesta Creek
*Mesa Creek
*Gilman River

At the northeast end (from north to south):
*Turnabout River
*Salor Creek

On the southeast coast (only in the southwest, near the southwest end of the lake):
*Cobb River
*Traverse River

Tourism

Hikers can start their hiking trips at Lake Hazen itself, or from Tanquary Fiord warden station at Tanquary Fiord Airport southwest of the lake.

In Popular Culture

The location is the object of a major story plot in the movie The Midnight Sky, although the actual filming was done in Iceland.

References

{{Lakes of Nunavut

Hazen, Lake
Ellesmere Island