Fjord lake

A fjord lake is a lake at the edge of the mountain, which, like a fjord, was created by the deepening of a mountain valley by a glacier that has now fully or partially defrosted . This makes a fjord lake a special form of the tongue basin lake . Numerous peripheral lakes of the Alps are such fjord lakes. Some of the fjord lakes in Scandinavia are also called “fjords”, although they are not bays . The bottom of fjord lakes is deeper than the bottom of the foothills, and in several lakes on the southern edge of the Alps it is even below sea ​​level .

Examples of fjord lakes

Fjord lakes on the edge of the Alps

Fjord lakes on the southern edge of the Alps, blue = sea level of the lake level,
brown = deepest point of the lake bed above (+) or below (-) the sea level

Alpine west and north edge

• Lac du Bourget
• Lac d'Annecy ( tectonically preformed)
• Léman ( Lake Geneva )
• Lake Constance
• Lake Brienz
• Lake Thun
• Lake Lucerne
• Walensee
• Lake Zurich
• Koenigssee
• Wolfgangsee
• Mondsee
• Attersee

Southern edge of the Alps

• Lago d'Orta (Lake Orta)
• Lake Maggiore (Langensee)
• Lake Lugano (Lake Lugano)
• Lago di Como (Lake Como)
• Lake Idro (Lake Idro)
• Lago di Garda (Lake Garda)
• Lake Iseo (Lake Iseo)

Fjord lakes in Scandinavia

- here just a small selection from hundreds -

• Hornindalsvatnet
• Randsfjord
• Snåsavatnet

Web links

• The Ice Ages (in what is now Austria)
• University of Jena: ice sheets and ice core archives

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lac du Bourget, vallée aval de la Leysse - le couloir naturel qui héberge ce lac, entre Chambéry et Culoz
2. ↑ Persée: Essai sur la formation et l'évolution du lac d'Annecy. Jalonnement du glacier Beaufort-Roseland vers Annecy
3. ↑ On the geology of Lake Geneva