Sarez Lake ( ) is a lake in

Rushon District Rushon District; , is a district in east Tajikistan, in the west-central part of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO). It stretches along the river Bartang between the Yazgulem Range to the north and the Rushon Range to the south.''R ...

Gorno-Badakhshan Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area but only two percent of its popul ...

province,

Tajikistan Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to ...

. Its length is about , its depth about a few hundred meters, its water surface elevation about above sea level, and volume of water over . The mountains around it rise over above the lake level. The lake formed in 1911, after a great

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

, when the Murghab River was blocked by a big landslide. Scientists believe that the

landslide dam A landslide dam or barrier lake is the natural damming of a river by some kind of landslide, such as a debris flow, rock avalanche or volcanic eruption. If the damming landslide is caused by an earthquake, it may also be called a quake lake. Some ...

formed by the earthquake, known as the

Usoi Dam The Usoi Dam is a natural landslide dam along the Murghab River (Tajikistan), Murghab River in Tajikistan. At high, it is the tallest dam in the world, either natural or man-made. The dam was created on 18 February 1911, when the 7.4-Surface wav ...

, is unstable given local

seismicity Seismicity is a measure encompassing earthquake occurrences, mechanisms, and magnitude at a given geographical location. As such, it summarizes a region's seismic activity. The term was coined by Beno Gutenberg and Charles Francis Richter in 194 ...

, and that the terrain below the lake is in danger of catastrophic flood if the dam were to fail during a future earthquake. The Usoi Dam wall survived a localised 7.2 magnitude earthquake, the 2015 Tajikistan earthquake, on the 7th December 2015 with no visible signs of deterioration. Shadau Lake is a small water body southwest of the Usoi Dam and west of Sarez Lake.

Formation

The formation of Sarez Lake is described in the book by Middleton and Thomas:Robert Middleton and Huw Thomas, ''Tajikistan and the High Pamirs'', Odyssey, 2008, ,

Notes

References

External links

Map of the Usoi Dam - Sarez Lake, Scale 1:110'000NASA Earth Observatory photoSarez Risk Mitigation Project

{{Authority control Lakes of Tajikistan Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region Landslide-dammed lakes Landslides in Asia Natural disasters in Tajikistan 1910s landslides 1911 natural disasters